Thứ Bảy, 16 tháng 11, 2013

KrishnamurtiAndTheUnityOfMan CarloSuares.html

This work is intended to replace the one which appeared in 1932, under the title of 'Krishnamurti'. Since then, both men and the times have matured. The 1932 book, like other essays which have appeared on Krishnamurti, has been obscured by parallels with the work of philosophers, novelists, politicians, psychologists and scientists. Such references are causes of error rather than factors in understanding. The present state of the world is so serious that it demands a completely new approach to the stranger which man is to himself. The fundamental value put forward by Krishnamurti is so new, that to compare it with known values would be to destroy it.

It reverses the thought-process itself, and breaks up the foundations which the mind has built for itself. It is therefore not a subject for study and comparison, but for personal living experience.

THE AUTHOR
PARIS, 1950
KNOWLEDGE OF THE SELF

Few would deny that our world is in chaos. The difficulties amongst which we struggle multiply at ever growing speed. Our weapons of destruction are such that we can destroy ourselves as a species. No value is capable of enlightening mankind about the meaning of human life. The individual is the whole, humanity is the whole. But each man belongs to a group which claims to possess truth to the exclusion of all other groups, and these groups become religions with their explanations of man and the universe in terms of God or of an economic system, in terms of the individual or of the collective, in terms of spirit or of matter, and thus we have chaos. Each individual, or group, thinks he alone is right and hence we have disaster. We do not possess a single valid standard, not a single truth which is purely human, on which all agree in action. All claims to the universal merely imply some particular cast of mind. This is the basic fact which must be faced if we are to understand the unique, simple and direct truth of which Krishnamurti speaks.

Total and instantaneous, unexpected, integrating the individual and the social, this truth is not perceived until the moment when it is lived. It is not therefore possible, a priori, to know its nature, nor even to know if it exists. One can, however, understand that if it does exist, it can only be when we free ourselves from every form of thought and feeling conditioned by any particular point of view, which contains the seed of its own contradiction. To claim for a particular belief in God or in science, in nationalism or in communism, and so on, a universal value, is to make it clash with the opposite particular. It is true that enlightened minds have often sought to reconcile contradictions by asserting that all roads are good that lead to the goal. These attempts, however, have always been based on the assumption that the unconditioned can be reached through the conditioned, perfection through imperfection, being through becoming. Here the unshakable denial of Krishnamurti bursts on us with indomitable force, a denial which has never faltered since the day it was first expressed : all roads are wrong, there are no roads. The end is in the means, the result is in the cause, for the means is its own end and the cause its own effect. All goals apart from means are therefore an illusion and becoming is a denial of being. Facts prove him right, for reconciliation of the opposites never takes place. If we examine things as they are, and not as we would like them to be, we cannot but notice that ideals, dogmas, systems, bring about adjustments, denials, interpretations and heresies, and that, in short, every aim is accompanied by its own contradiction. A road implies a guide, the guide an authority. To the master, the pontiff, the chief, the exploiter, are opposed the submission or the revolt of disciples, of the following, the ruled, the exploited. Though in the course of history certain men have perhaps expressed the essential value of human unity, as we find it stated i! n the works we call 'revealed', is it necessary to describe the tragic consequences of these dispensations as we see them before our eyes ? This tragedy is inevitable, says Krishnamurti, for all truth restated is a lie.

By an error repeated throughout the ages, truth, becoming a law or a faith, places obstacles in the way of knowledge. Method, which is in its very substance ignorance, encloses it within a vicious circle which, Krishnamurti says, we should break not by seeking knowledge, but by discovering the cause of ignorance. Truth is born from the dispersal of our shadows. These are the projections of ourselves, but truth is ourselves. It is always there, on the alert, so to speak, ready to invade us with its transparency. We cannot go towards it. What perversion of mind makes us think that we can know the road that leads to the unknown? Let us not seek 'God'. If we found him, it would not be the truth. Can we know the unknowable? These terms are contradictory. But to know the knowable, that is to say the elements, in action, of our thoughts and feelings, is to open ourselves to the unknowable.

In this world, confused and upset, collective ideologies are putting forward urgent remedies for ills of which they alone are the causes, and call the fundamental value of human unity an abstraction, a theory. Each one, feeling more or less clearly the onset of a catastrophe, demands immediate action and the help of men of good-will. Each wants to settle somehow the conflicts between nations and economic systems, between social classes and races. Each one, being in too great a hurry to have time to think, launches into action for or against this or that, and thereby feeds the conflict it claims to be settling and goes on pursuing the illusion, common to all fighters, of a peace to be achieved by victory and maintained by violence.

Confronted by these enormous conscriptions, Krishnamurti wants to remain alone, without disciples, without assistants, without any organization. He is armed with one value only, self-knowledge, which is, according to him, valid and effective both for individuals and for society. Often he is called a dreamer. His weapon seems absurdly inadequate. It did not stop the second world war and will not prevent the third. His reply is that the latter has already begun, since everybody is fighting, and that if it is peace we want, all we have to do is to stop fighting. Everybody would agree with this, on condition that the enemy completely disarms. So we reach the edge of the precipice. Our tragedy, however, is that we do not quite believe in the precipice. Against all evidence, it is more comfortable to hope that everything will come out all right, that the trouble will wait for some future generation, that there is nothing one really can do and that it is better to live on from day to day without thinking about it all too much.

Krishnamurti is extremely severe with these unconscious people. He feels himself totally responsible and totally desperate. To him it is man as a whole who is in danger, the individual and the species. There is no partial cure for this. On the contrary, the catastrophe is merely the sum total of all the cures.

Our leaders, businessmen and politicians, whose daily actions ceaselessly contribute to disaster, will not understand the fundamental truth because it condemns them. The victims, the discontented, the rebels, feeling themselves infinitely small amidst the enormous apparatus of administration, police, army and finance, cannot imagine that simple awareness can have any effect against it. They want collective action, as if this could be anything but partial, and thereby prove that they do not see the real evil, which is everywhere, one single whole. A group is never the total. Only the individual is universal, and mankind. A group does not think. It can hold ideas and opinions, it can never hold clarity. It is the organization of ignorance and of irresponsibility. Its actions are always regressive. But the fully conscious man is creative. To create is to see things as they are, with a new and clear consciousness. When a civilization is in the process of destroying itself, it does everything possible to smother this renewal of the mind. When the end arrives, the only thing to do to bring it nearer is to turn one's back on it.

The search for fundamental values has hitherto been a task for the few. The majority of those who lived within a particular civilisation, whether Brahmanist, Buddhist, Christian etc., felt relatively comfortable within their mental and physical state of conditioning, Men did not feel themselves frustrated in their creativeness, nor were they floundering in ignorance about their real purpose, such as is the case everywhere in the world today. Thus those who felt the need to break the conditioning of their particular collective unconscious and to re-establish contact with the one unique and transcendent human value, were rare. But today what was clear only to these few choice human beings – that is that conditioning destroys the original and creative liberty – has become an all-pervading factor. Man, as an individual, is more in bondage than he has ever been. The anonymous and irresponsible technique of world administrative and security services envelopes us in a network of restrictions, in which we choke and which, literally, is killing man as a creative human being, and soon will destroy him altogether. This fact is quite obvious. To perceive what freedom is, and of what it is made up, is no longer a question of personal preference, but a matter of life-and-death. Whatever be the fate of the human race, whether it survives or wipes itself out, our first effort must logically be directed towards the immediate necessity for insight, towards clear understanding. It is a question of breaking down now the process of conditioning which destroys our world and makes our so-called 'civilised' values turn against themselves.

We shall see, with Krishnamurti, that it is difficult to break down these barriers, for our thought is accustomed to function in a way that conditions it. Our mind, in so far as it regards itself as identified with an 'I', apparently permanent throughout its existence, is the product of an automatic process. This process, usurping an identity, has sought to justify itself in every way possible, but especially through the theologies. This habit has been going on ever since man began to talk to himself. We must, if we are to see ourselves as we are in reality, clear our minds to an extent which is unimaginable. To see ourselves exactly as we are, is, for Krishnamurti, the truth. Let us not go any further, nor anywhere else. To be aware of what is in our consciousness from day to day, from moment to moment, when faced with a life's challenge, is, by itself, knowledge, complete, infinite, timeless.

Truth is simple, but tragically complex. Can one reply to the 'Know Thyself' of Krishnamurti, that one does not agree? That knowledge of oneself is not desirable ? It is in the first agreement that we find the first doubt. 'Know Thyself' has been uttered many times throughout the centuries. There is apparently nothing new in this commandment, so that by a kind of mental inertia most of Krishnamurti’s questioners (we see it with almost every question that is put to him) have great difficulty in seeing that self-knowledge can be the key to all our problems. This is where the doubt comes in, for Krishnamurti does not say that it would be a good thing if we knew ourselves, or that such knowledge is desirable ; he does not add to the world, as it is, a philosophy which will embellish, pacify or comfort our lives. According to him, self-knowledge is action, immediate, powerful, concrete, the only one which can bring us out of our state of confusion. It is as urgent, real and practical as leaping into a lifeboat at the time of a shipwreck. We can therefore see how dangerous may be our misunderstanding Krishnamurti.

Those who feel the presence of a total human crisis will not fail to notice that the scope of Krishnamurti's 'Know Thyself’ is also total. They will therefore begin not by accepting it but by suspending judgment and by emptying their mind of all it contains. To applaud in advance a philosophic 'Know Thyself' like those who think they are cultured and enlightened, would be a fatal error. For if this value is absolute, it will shatter our inner world. It will make us lose our own identity. We shall no longer know what we are, nor even if we are anything at all. To speak of totality, of the absolute, is to speak of the death of the mind. These extreme expressions which Krishnamurti puts forward must be taken for what they are and with all they imply.

The implications are vast and profound. They must be approached with the stillness of a mind poised in the calm contemplation of its own process. 'Know Thyself” is then lit up with a secret and intimate clarity. First of all it reveals that no one can know us but ourselves. And that, since we are, all of us, the result of the past, by understanding ourselves we shall discover all knowledge, all wisdom. If these two discoveries do not frighten us, if we think them out fully and recreate ourselves through them, we shall see that our consciousness is obviously the one instrument which can examine, from within, the living being which we are. If we wish to discover the mystery of our human life, we must explore the interior of ourselves. Our consciousness will never be able to penetrate another, so as to understand what he is, in relation to his own consciousness and to nature. Each one of us is the end of all evolution throughout the totality of time. And do we not carry within us all origin and all cause ? We are, at one and the same time, our cause and our effect. The life in us is actual, present and active. It is the cause of its past. And the past, an unfathomable accumulation of struggles, reactions, unconsciousness, consciousness, deaths, births, assertions, defeats, losses of balance, conquests, realises – when it reveals itself to itself – that it is the cause of the present. And as soon as it acts in the present, it ceases to be the past, and thus becomes its own effect and its own cause. What secret motive, what mysterious urge has led our being to identify itself with an 'I am' ? If the identification is present, then its cause is also present, and not its elements, which belong to the past. It is this cause which is alive. Better : it is life itself. When this cause recalls its memories, it lends them the appearance of life, and when it rejects them, it annihilates them. Is this cause becoming or being? Or both? And what secret and shamefu! l complicities are shared by the becoming and the being to make consciousness so confused that it loses its bearings altogether?

These thoughts, and others, coming to life as we meditate, insistently put their queries to the mind which, harassed, finds no answer and sees itself driven to a state of total uncertainty. They open to us, to some extent, the way of knowledge, in the sense that they make us see deeper into ourselves if, of course, we allow them to do so and do not make of it all just another mental process. Our consciousness, in fact, is not just thought. Perhaps, we shall soon understand that thought is the most superficial of all the elements of consciousness. Our emotions, our feelings, our sensations and perceptions, our dreams and living symbols, all our subconscious and unconscious worlds, are more authentically our substance than our ideas, concepts and opinions, which we generally call thinking. Krishnamurti, by virtue of his self-knowledge, leads us into a sphere in which, having left words behind, thought becomes silence. Nevertheless, parallel with this, we have to strengthen in us a state of mind which is keen observation and intense awareness, yet impartial, disinterested and simple, in the manner of a store-keeper looking after the registering of a swift coming and going of goods. Such storekeeper would lose his efficiency if he wasted his time in contemplating the objects, in criticising them, in chatting about them. His supreme interest must be his work of registering them. If he is absent-minded, the traffic will escape him. Now, during the day, at every moment, something keeps on happening in us. Every second we act and react in every layer of our being. But by some curious distraction that being which is the summit of life on this planet does not interest us. If it interested us we would know it. The act of knowledge is immediate, being observation of what is, but it is extremely difficult to carry out since, seeking the individual, the particular, we come up against the general, the collective, at every level. Are not our most anxious problems, our most painful dramas! , simply due to a certain way of feeling, thinking, behaving, common to a national group, a religious group or a class ? Are not most of our family tragedies due to the fact that we identify ourselves with traditional and collective ways of behaviour? This is so true that tragedies, provoked by habits and customs which are foreign to us, seem to us monstrous. And when, dominated by our religion, we ask the authorities of a particular faith to solve the problems which they themselves have created for us, we are claiming to cure evil by evil. If, on the contrary, we accept that self-knowledge has value, which means that nobody can know us if we ourselves do not, we shall discard all belief, all tradition, all the sacred scriptures of the East and of the West, all interpretations of man and of the world, all philosophic conceptions, all ideologies, and even all ways of thinking. In fact, only a fresh mind, new, simpler in the true sense of the word, can see 'what is’. All that is taught obscures this vision.

Who can enlighten us about the secret meaning of a reaction, a fleeting emotion or the half-thoughts which, at all times of the day, under the pressure of life, constitute at once our substance and the key to ourselves? Who can decipher our inward book, the words of which ever chase time, if not ourselves? And is it necessary to go and consult the wisdom of the ages in order to find out if our hearts are dry, or if we love?

Thus, avoiding being carried away by the abstract projections of our ignorance, called, according to the particular case, God, Good, Spirit or Materialism, Country or the International, we shall see that knowledge of ourselves is the knowledge of our relationship to the world and to men, so that the individual problem is also social, and conversely, the social is also individual.

It is impossible for us to know ourselves except in our relationship with the world and with men. This proposition of Krishnamurti's is basic, and expresses more than any other the realistic character of his thought. We cannot conceive of any being existing in a state of isolation. Every creature, exists by virtue of his relationship to what surrounds him. So if we wish to know ourselves as we are, it can only be through our contacts, our exchanges, our conflicts. If we isolate ourselves for the purpose of meditating on self-knowledge, we separate ourselves in fact from what, by making us react, would reveal to us our true nature. The isolation in any case would be an illusion. Our external relations, reduced to extremes, as anchorites and monks seek to make them, would still exist. But they would be filtered through the shell of protection which we had organised round ourselves, in the image of our ignorance, We should thus reach a state of balance, of serenity, of contemplation, and even of mystic union, but this state would not be a state of knowledge and the God we should discover would be a fiction. If we are our own instruments of knowledge, we must ceaselessly test ourselves, and see ourselves as we react to the blows of fate. Life is unpredictable, uncertain and tends to break-up the certainties with which we prop up our psychological balances. God is the greatest security possible, the one to which we attribute the power of making us last indefinitely in a state of beatitude. But the more we reach a state of psychological security the less we know ourselves. To seek God, or truth, is to seek not to know oneself. If we sought only material security, it would eventually crumble, and thus allow us one day to rediscover both insecurity and life. No one is less alive than the man wrapped up in spiritual certainties, in his faith, in his righteousness. At least the sinner knows that the action he takes for certain ends is directed against other men. That knowledge wi! ll one day perhaps lead him to understanding. But the disinterested warrior in a good cause, believing that sincerity is virtue, acts for some against others, helps in the triumph of one against the other, and thus, not unlike the most stupid of soldiers, who never fails to justify his violence, is an artisan of chaos. Failing to seize, in his human relations, the opportunities he has for getting to know himself, he identifies himself, as an individual, with a collective cause, and spending his time in judging, in approving and disapproving, he finds in the last analysis that the more intense his actions are, the less he feels responsible for the confusion they create. And we may ask ourselves why it is that we alienate our responsibility, our mental maturity, to the point of forgetting that our first duty is not to behave like blind people but to know ourselves ? To hold the belief that knowledge of oneself is a branch of philosophy without any practical value, is to confess oneself to be irresponsible. Any workman, using as tool or an instrument which he has not bothered to learn how to handle, would feel responsible for his failure. But by a kind of aberration, we act in the world, using the most powerful of instruments, and the one closest to our powers of observation – ourselves, and admit a priori that it is impossible to know it. The mass of human beings sinks ever more deeply into ignorance and unconsciousness, so that even the most gifted allow themselves to be hypnotised by the prejudice according to which a state of absolute independent knowledge is inaccessible to the normal man. One 'believes' that one has an immortal soul, or that it does not exist. One 'believes' in a Creator, or in the evolution of a universe which is there one does not quite know how. As if 'to believe' had any meaning. As if to deny the belief of another had any sense. And finally one establishes, within the unknown, a limited and fortified enclosure, which, for the reason of being particular and narr! ow, becom! es murderously destructive.

To feel oneself totally, not partly, responsible is a necessary and sufficient reason for adopting knowledge of oneself as a unique value, individual and collective. This integration makes us see that no problem has any solution on its own particular level, for all such solutions are always a part of the very cause of the problem. They are the cause for the simple reason that the problem is due to its own limitations, to the separations it postulates. But when we look at men as a whole, as integral beings, we act above and beyond problems.

The extreme complexity of the modern world, subdivided into innumerable categories by specialists, escapes the control of the ordinary man. Production and distribution, for example, (which involves everyone directly), bring in an incalculable number of elements. These, belonging each to a separate branch of study, involve the economic, social and political sciences, the question of capital and labour, the organization of industry, of commerce, of agriculture, history, geography, mathematics, philosophy, in short, the whole of human knowledge, the application of which is based on contradictory theories, sustained by experts who agree among themselves on nothing except on the impossibility of producing and distributing the wealth of this world without conflict. The basis common to all their systems is violence. Now it is obvious that nobody can possibly be initiated into all those sciences. It is also obvious that no expert can ever have a full knowledge of his own speciality. Does this mean that the situation will be forever out of control? That it is beyond our mental powers? Let us examine it as a whole, directly, simply and in human terms. We observe first of all that it is easy to produce an enormous quantity of goods. If humanity gave its full output, in a few weeks an unimaginable pile of consume-goods would be available. On the other hand, hundreds of millions of people, having need of them, would absorb them immediately. Where then is the problem? Production is not a problem, for if it were allowed to develop according to its powers, it would tend towards being unlimited. It is the same with consumption. But between the two, according to specialists, stands a mysterious and unscaleable wall called production-cost, purchasing-power, profit and so on. They do not see that this 'problem' cannot be solved for the simple reason that it does not exist. Specialists have no doubt as to its existence. They try therefore to 'solve' it on its own particular level. Wer! e they to examine it from the point of view of refugees on a planet who expected no help from heaven and decided to share everything, to pool all they received from nature, then the words 'price', 'purchase', 'sale', and others, would soon cease to have any meaning. And even technically they have no reality. In fact as soon as war breaks out they disappear, cease to exist, vanish into nothingness where the problem belongs. In spite of all the technicians, it is not a material problem but a psychological one.

We have come back to the question of self-knowledge, and to the necessity of stepping out of the spheres in which specialists arbitrarily enclose questions that concern us all. This formidable technical apparatus, these economic and financial difficulties, these innumerable wheels within wheels, confused and inextricable, are the tricks through which our leaders forbid us entry into their councils. Their flaming sword, which they turn every way to keep us from the tree of life, is their smug and conceited 'competence' which awes us, as would a taboo. And we, at once credulous and disillusioned, resigned and rebellious, knowing neither how nor where to act, allow ourselves to be swept along to fight on the opposite side, the doomed side, in this game of destruction. Whether we are for the right or for the left, for the East or for the West, for the spirit or for matter, Krishnamurti shows us that these are reactions dictated by our own conditioning and that our weapons are as valueless as those of our enemies. But as soon as, we agree that the only true value is self-knowledge, a new world opens up for us, where, our being not split up and our difficulties not divided into categories, we integrate ourselves in ourselves and into human unity.
THE HUMAN

Self-knowledge, being an absolute, denies other values by fulfilling them. They must perish within it, as a seed in the good earth, to yield fruit. The total of human experience which the old values have so far interpreted, defined and guided, must be resolved within the new in a creative act of self-revelation. What is called the march of humanity towards a future based on the past becomes, with Krishnamurti, projected beyond the necessity of experience, into the negation of time. It is the very idea of becoming which is thus condemned by this new human consciousness, the various layers of which, pierced suddenly by the swift perception of their nature, disappear from their own sight. The so-called ways of knowledge are towards an end, an imitation, a discipline, a superiority, and are therefore matters to be set down and described. But the immediate and direct perception of 'what is' is not a way, is nothing that can be described. Such knowledge is therefore difficult to explain. The difficulty is not in what it is, but in all the obstacles and hindrances which we set up against it as a barrier. Hence Krishnamurti’s negative way of thought by which false values are seen to operate against themselves. It is like burning of weeds to clear the soil for a new life, although it may well appear to the ego as an invitation to its psychological death. And indeed it would be so, if one imposed it on oneself. A believer, profoundly identified with his faith, considers that it would be like committing suicide if he were suddenly forced not to believe. He regards with horror such destruction of his entity. But when there is comprehension, there is simultaneously death and resurrection, and one arises invulnerable to the degree to which one has made oneself vulnerable. It is useless to attempt a death 'with a view' to resurrection. Death of some sort is awaiting us in any case and we do not see why it should be kept waiting so long, unless we hope to cheat it or to mak! e it into passage through which the past, which is dead, would lead us into some future life which would obviously be its projection. All that one can think of belongs to the past and becomes the past as soon as one begins to think of it. This repetition of concepts, of representations, of beliefs, of disciplines, of meditations, is the measure of our flight before the inevitable. Why then, if it is so, do we flee? Why not die, time and again, in perpetual resurrection? If the spirit is to be fresh and new, is it not natural that each experience that passes should be made to die. Are we so uncertain, so doubtful, whether we shall respond to the world of tomorrow, that we store away the experiences of yesterday and build with them a structure of habits, an illusory protection against the unknown?

There is no difference between opening oneself to death and opening oneself to life. And, similarly, to refuse to die is to refuse to live. Death and life are the twin sides of the timeless unknown which has neither past nor future. Those who believe in matter or in spirit teach us that frustration in the present prepares for us a better life on this earth, or in the Beyond. For the former salvation will be collective, for others – individual. According to our tastes, pleasure, education, inclinations and general conditioning, we shall attach real value to systems promising the salvation of the body or of the soul, as if these had any objective existence apart of our belief in them!

The state of confusion in which specialists in this sphere find themselves is more complicated than that of politicians and businessmen, and the reasons we have for allowing ourselves to be exploited by them are deeper and more secret. He who lacks bread imagines a future paradise, on earth or in the after-life, where there will be bread in abundance. Thus everyone invents a picture of well-being for himself which is but the opposite of his life of misery. This negation of what is, of deprivation in the present, is real as a negation, not as a world. The negation is the fact, not the paradise. The negation is in the present. Paradise is put off till later. So what is organised by the economic system or by faith is escape, not the paradise, for that which does not exist cannot be organised. But our willingness to believe that common welfare is a matter of organization lends itself to any exploitation. Those suffering under a dictatorship want to establish their own. Those who refuse to allow their own minds to be fashioned in some particular way seek to impose on others a way of thinking which is just a photographic negative of the first. The sum total of these pursuits after imaginary aims, which we call duty, is driving us towards the destruction of humanity. By what trickeries, by virtue of what sacrosanct system of taboos, are we persuaded to confide the key of these illusory heavens to authorities ?

It is a mistake to study their systems and their theologies, their demonstrations and their revelations, for it is obvious that they contradict each other, all of them, and that the only person to be convinced by any one of them will be he who allows himself to be convinced. We should study to much greater advantage the reasons which make us adopt some particular system or embrace some peculiar faith. They would reveal to us the conditioning of our thoughts and feelings. Philosophers and theologians construct representative pictures of man and of the universe and then allow themselves to be fashioned by these systems, as though in the first place these systems had not been built by themselves. Thought is capable of every form of abstraction. It creates concepts it calls Being, Absolute, Eternity, and so on, and the thinker then imagines that these inverted projections thrown up by his ignorance, are Reality. The truth of the matter is that the thinker prefers to stay in ignorance and uncertainty rather than explore the secret desires and unconfessed motives which make him to believe in his system. His belief, his certainty, his faith, are not knowledge. The latter, being the self-revelation of the total process of our consciousness, contains neither concepts nor dogmas, nor any formulation of the world. Thus all philosophy is a hindrance to knowledge.

To know, in the ever-renewed flow of life, is to be aware at every moment of what is. It means therefore following all changes, all the most subtle modifications of our consciousness. This is why all preconceived opinions or ideas are harmful. Every pre-established item in our consciousness prevents it from moving. A consciousness rich in capacities, but free from points of reference, perceives the crystallisations of memory which tend to hamper it. Perception of an obstacle renders it fluid, and it is in the instantaneous disentanglement, in the rush of vital force which was held in bondage, that the bliss of knowledge resides. Knowledge is this happiness, this liberation. There is nothing in it resembling an encyclopedia or a doctrine. All that is knowable must be the object of observation, so that life, unknown to itself and unforeseen in its next move, can be lived. To seek to know the unknowable, as we are invited to do by theologians, is absurd. The timeless state of spontaneous creation has neither past nor future. But do we allow that freedom to happen when we shut ourselves up in our psychological fortresses? We deny that the knowable can be known and start off on the search for the unknowable. Thus the unknowing in us, which is our abyss of ignorance, claims to commune with the unknown of creative life! Ignorance consists in not knowing causes, and these are knowable. As soon as they are perceived, ignorance is no more and the unknowable can come into being. Truly, one brings it into existence, one creates it, through the destruction of ignorance.

Ignorance is synonymous with continuity in time. To waken up to this fact is a piece of adult behaviour. From childhood to this great maturity, we go through all stages of development in human consciousness. On awakening, each of us recognises that we constitute the last stage in the development of the total duration of the world. Thus our consciousness is itself an abyss, since it is caught in a process of becoming to which it can attribute neither a beginning nor a non-beginning. Nevertheless, we identify ourselves with this duration for all the years of our existence, from birth to death. All the enormous, undefined chain of time, wholly sunk in darkness, is there, and we gather up the few miserable links of our years and build them into selfhoods which we imagine are the only permanent threads in our chain of days. We are, willing to agree that this 'I' possesses the faculty of changing itself, even of transforming itself. Childhood, adolescence, maturity, old age, accumulate experiences which are happy or unhappy. Life strikes us at a thousand points. We modify our opinions, our points of view. We may go as far as being converted or feeling different to what we were, but we always have the inner certainty that it is the same being which is there, like a traveller who has had many adventures. Now this duration, this illusion of continuity, is the personification of ignorance itself, because it cannot but be an insignificant link between the mysterious abysses of the past and of the future. These two mysteries are absurd, since no solution for them is thinkable: neither the beginning nor the end, nor the non-beginning nor the non-end of time. Thus, the 'I' is the impersonation of something which is unthinkable ; in other words, it is false. If it wants to attribute to itself Reality, Being, there is nothing left for it to do but to cheat. Taking refuge in abstractions, it persuades itself that Eternity is infinite continuity which, strictly speaking, has no mea! ning at all.

The truth is that the 'I', uncertain and worried ignorant of its origin, its nature and its purpose, seeks appeasement in the form of distraction or security. Deep down inside, the emptiness, which is its essence, is betrayed as a cruel and contradictory compound of greed and fear. If this emptiness is relatively easy to discover, where it takes on appearances which hurt us, it nevertheless knows how to disguise itself for our gratification, so as to draw upon it our love and devotion. It seizes on the greatest words and the most exalted ideals, unperturbed by the fact that our enemies demolish our values, as we do theirs. Any virtue, which conceives of itself as opposing an evil, bases itself of necessity on an image, an ethic, a judgment, that is to say on a certainty, the establishment of which constitutes psychological security, even for the hero who is going to his death. Abnegation, renunciation, sacrifice, are some of the stratagems used by the 'I' to assert itself. If it were to recognise itself for what it is, would it have to sacrifice? Does one sacrifice ignorance?

But without going too deeply into examination of the most exalted values, and since the world is led neither by heroes nor by saints, it might perhaps be more profitable to introduce some knowledge of oneself, by examining the security which our spiritual (and temporal) advisers pursue to our detriment. Should we not ask ourselves whether we are not victims of this mirage, while it is still distant from us, and whether we do not ourselves create these leaders in the image of our terror.

The pursuit of psychological security, 'anti' this or that, leads us to a state of psychosis which destroys the only reasonable and relative security to which we can aspire: that of the material life of the human species. The masses, dulled by propaganda, are reduced to a state of non-thinking. The enormous psychological dough, which they are, is kneaded by the grossest lies and smothered in the lights and sounds of our large cities. These masses have acquired an unlimited faculty for absorbing psychological trash, which is nothing but the projection of frustrated physical urges, so that so-called spiritual values are merely transformed sensory needs. No wonder that the general attitude is of cynicism.

Amid this chaos, it is necessary and urgent that each of us should take his bearings and estimate the value of his behaviour. If, in fact, psychological security does not exist, if it is only an image in reverse of reality, if life is insecurity, how and on what psychological basis do we really live? The reply given to this question by our everyday life, understood and felt as it is actually, is the perception of our life's purpose, which is that of all individual existence. In taking our bearings, we also take the bearings of the human being in general, in his relation to life. If man is an end, the goal is within him. If he is not, understanding of the goal is within him. In the one case as in the other, the justifications he finds for 'becoming', instead of 'being' are within his powers of scrutiny. From insect to man, all individual existence has one unconscious aim, and a succession of conscious aims. If we construct partial aims, they are obviously not the sum-total of our reasons for existing, and have their place in the process of becoming. But if we place our life’s purpose in the process of becoming, we deny life itself. None of the justifications for becoming, when we examine them, are valid. To postpone the coming of truth until tomorrow is to imagine that, among a succession of numbers, there will be one which will suddenly jump to infinity. Man, in fact, is the meeting point of becoming and being, or, rather, the point where they clash, for they are irreconcilable, and, if the being is to be, becoming must cease.

The human being, isolated in his individual consciousness, is the sum total of all the strivings towards freedom which, throughout the evolution of the species, have culminated in him. During this evolution, the animals stopped on the way, got fixed, specialised, automatised in their adaptations. There was a constant struggle between adaptation and adaptability, between the necessity for living in this environment and that of surviving against its shocks. The environment consists of nature and society. The more stable the latter is (in the manner of insect society), the more is the individual reduced to a purely functional element. When there is no conflict between society and the individual, this means that the latter has adapted himself so much, that he has lost all capacity for changing function. In ant-society this is apparent. It is also to be seen in the case of castes and social classes, when they are rigid. From then on, in case of shock, the adapted individuals are condemned, which indicates that their stability is lost the moment it has been attained; and the society, whose functions are too specialised, dies.

Between the animal species and the human species the break occurs in the instincts accumulated by the past. These automatisms animate admirably an insect from the moment of its birth. Their disruption paralyses the newly-born child. The human being is born with only the rudiments of instincts, which confers on him the ability to respond intelligently to environment and thus to modify himself unceasingly. But this surprising result proves to be a contradiction. In fact, if it be true that adaptation is conquered by adaptability, the latter does not exist by itself. It is merely the constant rupture of adaptations which are so necessary that without them the completely unadapted individual would not survive.

There is together and at the same time adaptation and non-adaptation. There is movement. But if from the beginning of its intra-uterine life the child had not been the negation of such movement, the latter would not have happened. Extremely responsive, the physiological aggregate becomes psycho-physiological through the records, living within, of its reactions to environment, the co-ordination of which must necessarily create individual automatisms, owing to the memories distributed over an infinite number of registers. These accumulations, made up of points where life ceased to flow freely, tend towards inertia, and attain it through the phenomenon of identification, which is the 'I'. Thus the 'I' is only the personification of a contradiction, an accidental, though inevitable, stop in the movement which is life.

All the distress of the human condition is caused by the desire to perpetuate this breakdown in the flow of life, despite the lessons of life which teach us that nothing is permanent. True, the total of what is is permanent, but never a particular. The individual consciousness is a stage on which can be perceived the existence of an indestructible unknowable. At this stage Krishnamurti intervenes, and asks that the individual consciousness should abandon its efforts at self-identification with the eternal and the inscrutable and regard itself as it is, knowable and destructible, so that the unknown may come into being.

Biologically the evolution of species seems to have ended in man as we find him, since, armed with his technique, he knows how to tame nature and to direct himself physically in order to ensure the life of the race. Psychologically, however, this is not the case, and one could reasonably regard the present crisis as being an extension in the psychological sphere of the struggle for the growth of the species. And, in fact, it is to just such a mutation, a leap, that we are invited by Krishnamurti, when he states that man in the real sense of the word, the normal man, has no 'l'. Men isolated in their individual consciousness are a critical, a transition stage, a sub-species, so to speak, or a pre-humanity, which, if we examine it without passion, is not capable of life. Thus seen, Krishnamurti is not a teacher but a presence. He blends the unique and the normal in a way which is indescribable. He is what he says. We try in vain to find in him a manifestation of the 'I' which is no longer there, and this wonder surprises us in that we are not surprised. This presence is invisible, impossible to define; it is, in relation to us, the extreme simplicity of the totality of ourselves. The goal of our search is nearer to us than were our gropings. All our attempts cease in us spontaneously as soon as the realisation dawns. Beside Krishnamurti, we are but the precursors of the human. We precede him like the representatives of some more primitive species. Our struggles, our sufferings, our aspirations towards some salvation announced him, prepared the way for him, engendered him. But, to us, Krishnamurti is already the fulfilment of the human. He precedes us because he has already crossed the threshold. In this double sense of the word 'precede' becoming ceases. In him the sub-human has reached the human.

Nothing can better show the possibility of this union, than an examination of the unreal distance we have created between us and ourselves. This perception cannot be taught, since doctrines aim at helping us to cross a gap which does not exist, or, still more pernicious, wish the gap to be unbridgeable, human here, divine there. Krishnamurti, on the contrary, from the very first day on which he announced that he had realised his aim, has not ceased to say that it is at once total and within the reach of all. This remains true whether he is asserting that every liberated man attains the truth like a Christ or a Buddha, and that this accomplishment is not reserved to a small number of initiates or supermen, but can be attained by each one of us ; or whether, later, shaking rational logic, he reduces to nought the law of cause and effect; or, criticising all social action emanating from an idea, he states that revolutions, as well as reforms, are regressive.

In spite of his audiences which ask for time to understand, to mature, to receive a message which seems to be out of tune with their evolutionary stage of development, he persists in denying evolution, duration and becoming. This insistence, which is unceasing and ever-constant, is itself the basis and the essence of truth. Whatever the reasons one may have for associating Krishnamurti with an aim to be reached, a search, a path to some higher state of being, an effort towards a human ideal, or a divine perfection, these but express the rejection of reality.

It is therefore to a psychological change that we are invited by Krishnamurti, and he offers us, with this in view, a method which consists in being aware of our psychological conditioning, which can reveal itself to itself if we are prepared to lend it a constant and strenuous, but disinterested and impartial, attention from day to day and in face of life's provocations.

The difficulty, evidently, consists in the fact that we have identified ourselves with the elements of conditioning to such a degree that they are ourselves ; they are our 'I', and in fact, they cannot reveal to 'us' their meaning, but reveal it to themselves, for we can hardly set ourselves up as spectators of ourselves unless we create a super-spectator, and so on, endlessly, in metaphysical regress. The process is well-known. That is not the way to break the vicious circle of the 'I', for analysis only reinforces it. But if we wish to grasp what we are offered by Krishnamurti, what is most vital, the present instant, the timelessness of being without past or future, we can see at once, and perhaps not without surprise that the 'I' and the present never meet.

The 'I' gathers together all the elements of the past which it can use and projects them into the future by composing images for this purpose : the objects of our desire. And our dreams, sensual or spiritual, our pursuits, real or imaginary, are merely the deceits designed to give us the feeling of a permanence with continuity. Yet as soon as our insight suddenly clears up, in one living instant, that mass of extravagant desires, when we look for it, it is no longer there, and in its place, is a lightness, a deliverance, a happiness which nothing can describe.

True enough, the dreams, the pursuits, the unassuaged desires will return, armed with our habits, our spiritual laziness, our addictions. One living instant will put them to flight again. They will again return, but this time a little different. This ebb and tide will possibly last a long time, especially if we are already fashioned and crystallised by the years of our life. We can change inside, from one moment to another, but we shall perhaps need much patience and perseverance before order is re-established on all our psychic and physical levels. Krishnamurti knows this very well, and does not intend to work miracles. The state of knowledge is of sustained reflection, constant meditation, attentive discernment. To establish it is to renew it every moment.

Perception of the present is effective because it pierces through all the layers of the consciousness, passing through the various partitions separating one from the other, in concentric zones, which, according to psychologists, range from the conscious and subconscious to the unconscious. These are the separations which constitute the 'I'. They set up barriers between one region and another, and the mechanism of the blocking comes to consider itself as an entity. Like a parasite, it takes hold of our vital forces and robs us of our creative powers. This stratification of consciousness is the inevitable result of our growth to maturity. Psychologists are familiar with it. They know that messages are badly transmitted from one layer to another of our consciousness and often indeed in a way which is mysteriously indirect; they try to decipher the code of symbols and dreams of our unconscious and, by analysis, retrace in the past the causes of these disturbances in our conscious life.

They codify communications between layers, they translate the symbols, but the partitions remain. Thus, they bring us to a state in which we identify ourselves with a very precise image of ourselves and of our functions, and the 'I' is consolidated by all their explanations and justifications. It feels that it has adapted itself. The anguish of its interior contradictions has calmed down. Thus psycho-analysis becomes a regressive factor.

But according to Krishnamurti – and experience proves it – these partitions are living ones, and their cause is active in the present. The elements of crystallisation are accidental, what matters is the cause of the process of crystallisation, which is ever present, and without which the process would not be there. To seek a trauma in the past, as one examines a physical sore, is to ignore the living fact of psychical reality, where an effect never ceases to create its cause, owing to the state of ignorance in which it finds itself up to the moment when perception of the 'I' annihilates it by recreating it.

This cause-effect is, we have seen, the contradiction innate in every personified equilibrium which, challenged by the universal life, condemns itself by its self-assertion. The 'I' tries to ignore its condemnation, although its deep layers are well aware of it. Hence the barriers to intercept their messages, to confuse them, to confound them. Thus the 'I' creates ignorance for the_ sole purpose of justifying itself by invoking it. This comedy quickly turns to tragedy, the dream to a nightmare. The 'I' is an unhealthy state. We only have to perceive it, to admit with Krishnamurti, in spite of the religions which are practised all over the globe, that the 'normal' man is free of the 'I'. What does it matter if at first there is, paradoxically, only one example of this 'normal' state ! What Krishnamurti says is based on common sense and observation. There is nothing we cannot examine or experiment with, on condition that we get rid of the existing theories which feed the world conflict. Asia wishes the 'I' to be considered an illusion, and the Cosmic Self a reality. The West prefers immortal souls and a personal God. Between these two, a pragmatic sociology manufactures a collective 'I' by suppressing individuals and psychology manoeuvres between these fortified strong-points. But, in truth, we need no one in order to be enlightened about ourselves. If our attention is drawn to the phenomenon of consciousness of which we are the subject, we shall discover the simple fact that to know where to seek is to find.

The disappearance of the 'I', which, we may say, sounds fantastic in these terms, will be considered as a phenomenon as normal as its appearance – which we know because we all experienced it when we emerged from childhood, when, in one form or another, a feeling of strangeness concerning our identity surprised us at the very moment when the 'I' was crystallising. This feeling, mingled with wonder and anguish, has come to all of us more or less often, accompanied by queries seemingly absurd, as to the coincidence that we were our own selves, our parents no other than themselves, and the world this one and no other. This feeling we all tried to forget and were encouraged to do so in our environment organised by our apprehensive elders, anxious to stifle and bury a dangerous perception which was always threatening to emerge. It will return naturally to us and carry us through the very foundations of our ego, if only we let it happen.

And we also know moments of consciousness lived beyond the presence of the self, as, for example, on waking out of a deep sleep, when thought follows its own course, seizes on objects, and perceives itself doing so, until suddenly we realise that we are ourselves and again identified with our present condition. A state constantly below self-consciousness has been observed among the primitives and savages, where the individual is little different from the clan, the totem, his relatives or his children. An opposite phenomenon happens when a group-soul, an unconscious collective takes on within individuals the appearance of an 'I'. The most stupefied soldier, incapable of individual thought, utterly standardised, will have a high opinion of himself and imagine himself existing as a personal entity. Without going so far, all conformity of thought, of feeling, of behaviour, reinforces in the individual the idea he has of 'himself'. Examination of this absurdity reveals to us the collective nature of the individual 'I', which would be a contradiction in terms if it were not the contradiction of the 'I' itself.

But we also all know moments lived outside our egos: those in which we love, live intensely, create or act under the influence of what we call intuition. In moments of great danger or of great beauty, it happens that we are concentrated in ourselves, integrated, whole. At these moments, we go far beyond thought. We leave it behind us and by a curious kind of response it slows down and seems to be suspended. The 'I' has given way to creative life.

The 'I', the creator of our civilisations and our values, is an infantile stage of mankind. Beyond the 'I' is its maturity, its fruit, in which all myths, religions, philosophies, accumulated throughout the centuries, disappear.

All this we can verify for ourselves.

Krishnamurti stated in 1948, in reply to a question, that he had never read any books on philosophy, nor any sacred books. What he knows, he knows directly and thus shows by example the effectiveness of knowledge of oneself. He does not therefore teach in the ordinary sense of the word, but, in the course of talks and discussions organised for him in different countries, he finds a way of coming into contact with his various audiences by spontaneously revealing to them his way of thinking, as it happens to him. Most of the works which have appeared from him are nothing but shorthand accounts of these discussions, revised and corrected. We must not, therefore, look for a book conceived as a treatise on a subject. It may be added also that, at the time of writing (1950), the public life of Krishnamurti has already about a quarter of a century, behind it and has undergone considerable development in expression. Without quoting certain minor works which he had to write as a child, such as At the Feet of the Master, or others, written under his name, like Education as Service, which have nothing in common with his adult thought, it is quite clear that his first talks and the poems following his realisation (towards 1927: he was then about 30) ought not to be quoted, if we wish in good faith to understand his message. On the other hand, if they are placed in proper perspective, these early works are profoundly human and allow us to follow the development of a wonderful experience.

In the following chapters, we shall therefore begin with the early days of Krishnamurti and follow him step by step up to the present day. On the way we shall have an opportunity of dwelling a little on what has just been condensed in a few pages.
THE SONG OF LOVE

Krishnamurti began when very young to deliver lectures and to write, but, as we have just said, the documents belonging to that first period, books, pamphlets and notes, do not enlighten us much as to his message, even if they reveal a few traits of his character. In order to understand the message, without subjecting it to misinterpretations arising from his very early teachings, we need not examine it before 1927, the date when, as Krishnamurti puts it, he had fully realised himself.

His message, however, undergoes constant transformation. One can easily find contradictions in it: for example, between a statement made in 1928 and another in 1931. This can be explained by the nature of the message itself, which is not the result of scientific research or study in libraries, but the day-to-day descriptions of a living experience, which, in order to become intelligible, must invent a language. Krishnamurti, who was taught from his earliest childhood to worship a certain image, then another, never accepted the peace which such illusions offered. He was athirst for eternity, but an eternity in living, direct contact with daily life. It was therefore his great love, in the most universal and at the same time most simple meaning of the word, which enabled him to leave the shadows of the churches.

More attracted by the expression of a face, by a gesture, by the human, than by abstractions, his greatest desire was to learn from all and everyone, that he may be united with the life which was so fleeting and which was hidden from him in images and divinities. This was a passionate love for all that is living, for the entire world, for the passer-by, for everything. An indomitable will to doubt, not to allow himself to be imprisoned by anyone or by anything. And, at last, revolt, nurtured by the infinite suffering which was his lot during childhood and youth. This was what brought him to knowledge. It will readily be understood that his decisive experience was anything but an intellectual discovery. When, suddenly, he felt his psychological nature, so to speak, 'melt' within life, that impersonal, enormous, universal life he had always sought, quite naturally that shock, that metamorphosis, that death of the 'I' within the eternal present, began by expressing itself as best it could, through images and ideas that belonged to the past.

The 'I' had disappeared, but into a permanence. There was no break, no halt, but an unbroken stream of life. The psychological life was transposed into a world in which the old world existed, though transfigured and recreated. For a long time Krishnamurti thought that it was a question of union: was it not his love for life that had allowed him to be destroyed by it as an 'I' ?

His first expression is a hymn of joy, a song of love in which there is no place for an explanation of the phenomenon which had taken place. Already, going far beyond the experiences of mystics that are known to us, Krishnamurti has discovered, contrary to the gropings of his thought, a de-divinised life, a life without myths, if we may so express it. He knows already that no way, no path, no mysticism, no yoga leads to it. He leaves the religious sphere and concentrates on Reality, establishing it within himself permanently (whereas no mystic gives us an example of absolute and definite identification), and allows himself to be re-created by it.

This fact amply demonstrates that the experience was a total one. From then onwards one witnesses the evolution of this man, invaded by the living Reality which has dispossessed him of himself. He needs three or four years to recreate for himself, slowly and patiently, a new intelligence, a new way of thinking, a method. The song of love, the lyrical explosion, the freshness of spring, making a direct appeal to joy, happiness, unreasoning enthusiasm, are to be transformed into a message, in which clear intelligence will be united with love.

This intelligence, however, created by love, will itself elude those who claim to classify it, to stop its growth, to dissect it, to smother it in a system. It will make its appeal to a way of thinking, which, far from being cerebral, will be a fusion of intelligence and love, and in which these two powers never at any moment become dissociated.

It is because of this fusion that we must not limit ourselves to the study of the most recent parts of Krishnamurti's message, which analyse the functions of consciousness, but must also get to know the wonderful impulse of love which drove this man to annihilate himself to himself.

It will be noticed first of all that from the age of ten or twelve, Krishnamurti became the centre of a considerable movement. When he was about fifteen, in 1911, the movement was organised for setting the stage for the role of a World-Teacher which had been reserved for him. This led to a drama in 1927, and to a Destruction of the Temples in 1929. These incidents had such repercussions that twenty years later (at Madras in 1947) he was still being asked questions on the subject:

QUESTION: The Theosophical Society announced you to be the Messiah and World-Teacher. Why did you leave the Theosophical Society and renounce Messiahship ?

KRISHNAMURTI: I have received several questions of this kind, and I thought I would answer them. It is not frightfully important, but I will try to answer them.

First of all let us examine the whole question of organizations. There is a rather lovely story of a man who was walking along the street and behind him were two strangers. As he walked along, he saw something very bright and he picked it up and looked at it and put it in his pocket and the two men behind him observed this and one said to the other: 'This is a very bad business for you, is it not?' and the other who was the devil answered: 'No, what he picked up is truth. But I am going to help him organize it.' You see it!

Can truth be organized? Can you find truth through an organization? Must you not go beyond and above all organizations to find truth? After all why do all spiritual organizations exist? They are based on different beliefs, are they not? You believe in one thing and somebody else believes in it too and around that belief you form an organization and what is the result? Beliefs and organizations are forever separating people, keeping people apart; you are a Hindu, I am a Muslim, you are a Christian and I am a Buddhist. Beliefs throughout history have acted as a barrier between man and man, and any organization based on a belief must inevitably bring war between man and man as it has done over and over again. We talk of brotherhood, but if you believe differently from me I am ready to cut your throat; we have seen it happen over and over again.

Are organizations necessary? You understand that I am not talking about organizations formed for the mutual convenience of man in his daily existence : I am talking of the psychological and the so-called spiritual organizations. Are they necessary? They exist on the supposition that they will help man to realise truth and they are a means of propaganda: you want to tell others what you think or what you have learned, what appears to you to be a fact. And is truth propaganda? What is truth to someone, when propagated surely ceases to be truth for another. Does it not? Surely, reality, God or whatever you call it, is not to be propagated. It is to be experienced by every one for himself and that experience cannot be organized; the moment it is organized, propagated, it ceases to be the truth, it becomes a lie, therefore a hindrance to reality, because after all, the real, the immeasurable cannot be formulated, cannot be put into words, the unknown cannot be measured by the known, by the word, and when you measure it, it ceases to be the truth, therefore it ceases to be the real and therefore it is a lie, and therefore generally propaganda is a lie. And organizations that are supposed to be based on the search for truth, founded for the search of the real, become the propagandists’ instruments, and so they cease to be of any significance; not only this particular organization in question but all spiritual organizations become means of exploitation. They acquire property and property becomes awfully important ; seeking members and all the rest of that business begins ; they will not find truth for the obvious reason that the organization becomes more important than the search for reality. And no truth can be found through any organization because truth comes when there is freedom and freedom cannot exist when there is belief, for belief is merely the desire for security and a man who is caught in his need for security can never find that which is.

Now, with regard to Messiahship, it is very simple. I have never denied it and I do not think it matters very much whether I have or have not. What is important to you is whether what I say is the truth. So, don't go by the label, don't give importance to a name. Whether I am the world-teacher or the Messiah or something else is surely not important. If it is important to you then you will miss the truth of what I am saying because you will judge by the label and the label is so flimsy. Somebody will say that I am the Messiah and somebody else will say that I am not and where are you? You are in the same confusion and the same misery, in the same conflict. So, surely, it is of very little significance. I am sorry to waste your time on this question. But whether I am or I am not the Messiah is of very little importance. But what is important is to find out, if you are really earnest, whether what I say is the truth and you can only find out whether what I say is the truth by examining it, by being aware now of what I am saying and finding out whether what I am saying can be worked out in daily life. What I am saying is not so very difficult to understand. The intellectual person will find it very difficult because his mind is perverted and a man of devotion also will find it extremely difficult, but the man who is really seeking will understand because of its simplicity. And what I am saying cannot be put into a few words and I am not going to attempt to say it in a few words because my answers to the questions and the various talks which I have given will reveal it if you are interested in what I am saying. (18)

The questions: 'Are you the Messiah ? – 'Are you the World-Teacher? – 'Have you renounced your mission?' – 'Are you he who was foretold?' – are obviously strongly tinged with religious emotion, and the contrasting natures of Krishnamurti's reply, analysing as it does the character of so-called spiritual organizations, i. e. religions, is striking. In his early period, however, in 1927, Krishnamurti was far from having attained this objective calm. Let us listen to him at that time:

I have always in this life, and perhaps in past lives, desired one thing: to escape, to be beyond sorrow, beyond limitations, to discover my Guru, my Beloved – which is your Guru and your Beloved, the Guru, the Beloved who exists in everybody, who exists under every common stone, in every blade of grass that is trodden upon. It has been my desire, my longing, to become united with Him so that I should no longer feel that I was separate, no longer be a different entity with a separate self. When I was able to destroy that self utterly, I was able to unite myself with my Beloved. Hence, because I have found my Beloved, my Truth, I want to give it to you. (10)

Through the images, myths and doctrines pressed upon him ; and despite the advice given him by his patrons, with their occult hierarchies and their magics; in spite, too, of the traditions, superstitions, prejudice and waves of devotion besieging him, this stubborn and solitary individual was able to win through to deliverance, without once wavering in intention.

All the texts of his we possess, no matter how far back they go, bear witness to this will and determination to discover, entirely on his own, his essence, which he knew to be the essence of all. As early as 1926, before realisation came, he was saying:

I think all of you realise that to create, as you must create if you would live, there must be struggle and discontent ; and in guiding these to their fruition you must cultivate your own point of view, your own tendencies, your own abilities; and for this I desire to arouse in each that Voice, that Tyrant, the only true guide that will help you to create. Most of you prefer – it is a much easier way – to copy. Most of you like to follow… In cultivating this Voice till it becomes the one Tyrant, the one Voice which we obey, we must find out our goal and work unceasingly for its attainment. Now what is this goal? To me it is this, I want to attain the Ultimate Truth. I want to reach a state where I know for myself that I have conquered, that I have attained, that I am the embodiment of that Truth. This is the goal for me. The first essential is the strengthening of this Voice, in each of us, which asserts itself from time to time… means a life according to its edicts…

This is for me the big thing in life. I do not want to obey anybody, it does not matter who he is, so long as I do not feel he is right. I do not want to hide behind the screen which veils the Truth…

If you have this enthusiasm, you will find that your Intuition, that Voice which we are eager to hear, will become your Master, the one authority in your lives… (9)

Krishnamurti, therefore, not only knows already what he wants, but also what he must do to attain it: rouse that inner voice, that creative intuition which has to make us 'more than the ordinary', and the irresistible call of which will command us to leave all and follow it. In brief, by a process of self-revelation, Krishnamurti clearly establishes within himself his own goal, that tyrant which will never cease driving him without ever granting him respite. This is why he sets it up, and then uses that goal itself as a means of attaining it!

He gave this will expression, when, as a small child almost dying of hunger, he aspired to one thing only : absolute truth, which he had made up his mind to find, without the aid of anyone whatsoever, without ever yielding, and without ever stopping on the way! At the age of ten, he was already consumed by this incredible call of the absolute. And when at last he came to the end of his search, what matters if he began by hymns to the self, the Well-Beloved? What matters the name he gave to the All which is in all ? You ask me : Who are you ? I am all things, because I am Life. Let us understand that that 'I' was already no longer an entity, that Krishnamurti was no longer there:

If I say, and I will say, that I am one with the Beloved, it is because I feel and know it. I have found what I longed for, I have become united, so that henceforth there will be no separation, because my thoughts, my desires, my longings – those of the individual self – have been destroyed.

Hence I am able to say that I am one with the Beloved – whether you interpret it as the Buddha, the Lord Maitreya, Shri Krishna, the Christ, or any other name. (10)

From childhood he had been taught to adore images, but his whole desire, his whole aspiration, during all these years of suffering and struggle, had been to suppress the object of his search by a process of identification :

I said to my self : as long as I see Them outside as in a picture, an objective thing, I am separate, I am away from the centre ; but when I have the capacity, when I have the strength, when I have the determination, when I am purified and ennobled, then that barrier, that separation, will disappear. I was not satisfied till that barrier was broken down, till that separateness was destroyed. Till I was able to say with certainty, without any undue excitement, or exaggeration in order to convince others, that I was one with my Beloved, I never spoke. I talked of vague generalities which everybody wanted. (10)

Thus his desire to attain to that ultimate reality did not lead to self-deception but made all clear. Not to deceive oneself, and to attain to reality, are synonymous terms.

When I began to think for myself, which has been now for some years past, I found myself in revolt. I was not satisfied by any teachings, by any authority. I wanted to find out for myself what the World-Teacher meant to me and what the Truth was behind the form of the World-Teacher. Before I began to think for myself, before I had the capacity to think for myself, I took it for granted that I, Krishnamurti, was the vehicle of the World-Teacher because many people maintained that it was so. But when I began to think, I wanted to find out what was meant by the World-Teacher, what was meant by the taking of a vehicle by the World-Teacher, and what was meant by His manifestation in the world.

I am going to be purposely vague, because although I could quite easily make it definite it is not my intention to do so. Because once you define a thing it becomes dead. If you make a thing definite – at least that is what I maintain – you are trying to give an interpretation which in the minds of others will take a definite form and hence they will be bound by that form from which they will have to liberate themselves.

What I am going to tell you is not on authority, and you must not obey, but understand. It is not a question of authority, nor of set lines which you must follow blindly – that is what most of you are wanting. You want me to lay down the law, you want me to say: I am so and so ; so that you can say: all right, we will work for you. That is not the reason why I am explaining, but it is in order that we should understand each other, that we should help each other…

Now, when I was a small boy I used to see Shri Krishna, with the flute, as He is pictured by the Hindus, because my mother was a devotee of Shri Krishna. She used to talk to me about Shri Krishna, and hence I created an image in my mind of Shri Krishna, with the flute, with all the devotion, all the love, all the songs, all the delight – you have no idea what a tremendous thing that is for the boys and girls of India… (10)

Then he was shown other images, and finally it was the Buddha he saw.

It has been a struggle all the time to find the Truth, because I was not satisfied by the authority of another, or the imposition of another, or the enticement of another. I wanted to discover for myself, and naturally I had to go through sufferings to find out … (10)

What was this Truth? It was everything : everything at once, everything that hid behind each image, and something more than all those images.

I said to myself : until I become one with all the Teachers, whether They are the same is not of great importance : whether Shri Krishna, Christ, the Lord Maitreya, are one is again a matter of no great consequence…

Though I used to worship that picture, I was not satisfied… and because of my dissatisfaction, because of my discontentment, because of my sorrows, I was able to identify myself with the picture and hence I am the picture…

I could not have said last year, as I can say now, that I am the Teacher ; for had I said it then, it would have been insincere, it would have been untrue. Because I had not then united the Source and the Goal, I was not able to say that I was the Teacher. But now I can say it. I have become one with the Beloved. I have been made simple . (10)

In India, the miraculous becomes, in all simplicity, a part of everyday life. The young Krishnamurti really saw these images which he was taught to adore: Shri Krishna with his flute, of whom his mother spoke, and who is adored by all small Hindus, and then the various Masters, and lastly Buddha. They lived in him, but in the end, impelled by his burning desire to discover the truth which these images concealed, he passed, truly and literally, through them, became identified with them. It was only later, when this identification, this union, had taken place, that he understood that these images had been but a projection of himself, and of his own essence, which he was pursuing.

About this time he told the following story :

One day a disciple went in search of a Sanyasi and asked him to teach him the truth. The Sanyasi shut him up in a cave.

- Meditate deeply, he told him, and in a year’s time you will see the Master appear.

In a year's time, he asked the disciple if the Master had appeared to him.

- Yes, was the reply.

- Then meditate another year, and the Master will speak to you.

A year later the Master had spoken.

- Now, said the Sanyasi, Listen for a year to what the Master says to you.

And for a year the disciple heard the Master's teachings. And when that third year had gone, the Sanyasi went to the disciple and said :

- Now you have lived with the Master and he has spoken to you and you have heard his teachings, meditate until there is no Master any longer. Then you will know the truth.

The difference between the disciple and Krishnamurti was that the latter had to discover all by himself and in spite of everyone, that the Master was none other than himself. His meeting with the last image, the adorable image of Buddha, with which he succeeds in merging, was actually lived by him, and it was an indescribable emotion, an ecstatic experience.

I sat a-dreaming in a room of great silence,
The early morning was still and breathless,
The great blue mountains stood against the dark skies, cold and clear,
Round the dark log house
The black and yellow birds were welcoming the sun.
I sat on the floor, with legs crossed, meditating,
Forgetting the blue sunlit mountains,
The birds,
The immense silence,
And the golden sun.
I lost the feel of my body,
My limbs were motionless,
Relaxed and at peace.
A great joy of unfathomable depth filled my heart.
Eager and keen was my mind, concentrated.
Lost the transient world,
I was full of strength.
As the Eastern breeze,
That suddenly springs into being,
And calms the weary world,
There in front of me
Seated, cross-legged, as the world knows Him,
In His yellow robes, simple and magnificent,
Was the Teacher of Teachers. (12)

The image lived with him, accompanied him, but despite his happiness, he did not rest there. He kept on searching. He doubted. He wished to shatter the image, pass through it. He wished to reach the essence of things, the absolute. One day :

He walked towards me and I stood still.
My heart and soul gathered strength.
The trees and birds listened with unexpected silence.
There was thunder in the skies -
Then, utter peace.
I saw Him look at me,
And my vision became vast.
My eyes saw and my mind understood.
My heart embraced all things,
For a new love was born unto me.
A new glory thrilled my being,
For He walked before me, and I followed, my head high.
The tall trees I saw through Him,
Gently waving in welcome,
The dead leaf, the mud,
The sparkling water and the withered branches.
The heavily laden and chattering villagers walked through Him -
Ignorant and laughing.
The barking dogs rushed, through Him, at me.
A barrack of a house became an enchanted abode,
Its red roof melting into setting sun.
The garden was a fairy land,
The flowers were the fairies.
Standing against the dark evening sky,
I saw Him
In His eternal glory.
He walked before me
Down the little narrow path,
Always looking, while I followed.
He was at the door of my room,
I passed through Him.
Purified, with a new song in my heart,
I remain.
He is before me forever.
Look where I may, He is there.
I see all things through Him.
His glory has filled me and awakened a glory that I have never known.
An eternal peace is my vision,
Glorifying all things.
He is ever before me. (12)

He is identified with the image. It is in him. It fills him, but that is still not enough. Doubt is not appeased. He still meditates and seeks. He wishes to be his own essence… And at last, one day, reality is there, in its bareness. The images have disappeared. The essence of things itself is seen. His heart overflows with tenderness and happiness. He is transported by an indescribable joy, by infinite compassion for those who lack in themselves such ineffable love. The love so great that it is all. And at the same time, it is solitude. He wishes to give his wealth to all men, shower upon them that eternity of love, on all of them one by one. He burns in that transfiguration. The flame makes him tremble with such intensity that his body, which is too slender and too finely-bred, seems every moment on the point of being shattered. And yet the intensity is also so concentrated, that the outcome is infinite peace. Around him, people listen, and let themselves be carried away by vague emotions, or shrug their shoulders. They do not understand. Already he is a stranger. But what does it matter ?

Since I have met with Thee,
O my Beloved,
Never have I known the loneliness.
A stranger am I
Amidst all peoples,
In all lands.
Amidst the multitude of strangers,
Full am I
As the scent of the jasmin.
They surround me,
But I know no loneliness.
I weep for the strangers ;
How alone they are.
Full of immense loneliness,
Fearful,
They take to themselves
People
As lonely as themselves.
A guest am I
In this world of transient things,
Unfettered by the entanglements thereof.
I am of no country,
No boundaries hold me.
O friend,
I weep for thee,
Thou layest deep thy foundation,
But thy house perishes on the morrow.
O friend,
Come with me,
Abide in the house of my Beloved.
Though thou shalt wander the earth,
Possessing nothing,
Thou shalt be as welcome
As the lovely spring,
For thou bringest, with thee
The Companion of all.
O friend,
Live with me,
My Beloved and I are one. (12)

And now the song of that love wells up and fills everything. His Well-Beloved is no longer in his heart, but has filled the world, and he is everywhere. He has truly emerged from himself. He is completely out of centre.

Oh ! Listen,
I will sing to you the song of my Beloved.
Where the soft green slopes of the still mountains
Meet the blue shimmering waters of the noisy sea,
Where the bubbling brook shouts in ecstasy,
Where the still pools reflect the calm heavens,
There thou wilt meet with my Beloved.
In the vale where the cloud hangs in loneliness
Searching the mountain for rest,
In the still smoke climbing heavenwards,
In the hamlet toward the setting sun,
In the thin wreaths of the fast disappearing clouds,
There thou wilt meet with my Beloved.
Among the dancing tops of the tall cypress,
Among the gnarled trees of great age,
Among the frightened bushes that cling to the earth,
Among the long creepers that hang lazily,
There thou wilt meet with my Beloved.
In the ploughed fields where noisy birds are feeding,
On the shaded path that winds along the full, motionless river,
Beside the banks where the water laps,
Amidst the tall poplars that play ceaselessly with the winds,
In the dead tree of last summer's lightning,
There thou wilt meet with my Beloved.
In the still blue skies,
Where heaven and earth meet
In the breathless air,
In the morn burdened with incense,
Among the rich shadows of a noon-day,
Among the long shadows of an evening,
Amidst the gay and radiant clouds of the setting sun,
On the path on the waters at close of the day,
There thou wilt meet with my Beloved.
In the shadows of the stars,
In the deep tranquillity of dark nights,
In the reflection of the moon on still waters,
In the great silence before the dawn,
Among the whispering of waking trees,
In the cry of the bird at morn,
Amidst the wakening of shadows,
Amidst the sunlit tops of the far mountains,
In the sleepy face of the world,
There thou wilt meet with my Beloved.
Keep still, O dancing wat! ers,
And listen to the voice of my Beloved.
In the happy laughter of children
Thou canst hear Him.
The music of the flute
Is His voice.
The startled cry of a lonely bird
Moves thy heart to tears,
For thou hearest His voice.
The roar of the age-old sea
Awakens the memories
That have been lulled to sleep
By His voice.
The soft breeze that stirs
The tree-tops lazily
Brings to thee the sound
Of His voice.
The thunder among the mountains
Fills thy soul
With the strength
Of His voice,
In the roar of a vast city,
Through the shrill moan of swift-passing vehicles,
In the throb of a distant engine,
Through the voices of the night,
The cry of sorrow,
The shout of joy,
Through the ugliness of anger,
Comes the voice of my Beloved.
In the distant blue isles,
On the soft dewdrop,
On the breaking wave,
On the sheen of waters,
On the wing of the flying bird,
On the tender leaf of the spring,
Thou wilt see the face of my Beloved.
In the sacred temple,
In the hall of dancing,
On the holy face of the sannyasi,
In the lurches of the drunkard,
With the harlot and with the chaste,
Thou wilt meet with my Beloved.
On the fields of flowers,
In the towns of squalor and dirt,
With the pure and the unholy,
In the flower that hides divinity,
There is my well-Beloved.
Oh, the sea
Has entered my heart.
In a day,
I am living an hundred summers.
O, friend,
I behold my face in thee,
The face of my well-Beloved.
This is the song of my love. (12)

During the whole of this period Krishnamurti retraces in spirit the stages through which he has passed, seeks to understand them, describes them. He learns from them the lesson which he lavishes on those around him and which they understand so little. The stages are vain, useless. It is absurd to try and go through them. There is nothing to go through. There is no truth but in perceiving 'what is'. There is no way but knowledge of oneself. His song of love becomes gradually more concentrated, though retaining its appeal, gathers itself together and begins to give birth to understanding of itself.

Through the veil of Form,
O Beloved,
I see Thee, myself in manifestation.
How unattainable are the mountains to the valley,
Though the mountains hold the valley.
How mysterious is the darkness
That brings forth the watching stars,
And yet the night is born of day !
I am in love with Life.
As the mountain lake
Which receives many streams
And sends forth great rivers,
But holds its unknown depths,
So is my love.
Calm and clear as the mountains in the morning
Is my thought,
Born of love.
Happy is the man who has found the harmony of life,
For then he creates in the shadow of eternity . (16)

The tone begins to change. The image fades. It will never return. The era of visions is over. The thought is born of love, 'calm and clear', and we shall now see it put to flight philosophies, metaphysics, psychologies, and effortlessly, spontaneously, create the values of self-knowledge.

The song of love becomes an appeal to clarity. The lyricism fades with the last images. From excess of richness, the language is stripped bare.

I have lived the good and evil of men,
And dark became the horizon of my love.
I have known the morality and immorality of men,
And cruel became my anxious thought.
I have shared in the piety and impiety of men,
And heavy became the burden of life.
I have pursued the race of the ambitious,
And vain became the glory of life.
And now I have fathomed the secret purpose of desire. (16)

Here, now, is the last stage. Love, united to intelligence, mingled inextricably with it, has rejected all object. Can such an impersonal love still be called love, in the meaning commonly given to the word? No. What becomes of love when the psychological being disappears? It is its own aim, its own meaning, its own beginning and its own end. It is the present moment.

Love is its own eternity.

You are carried away by the mere expressions of life, the shadow, and ignore Life itself. To understand Life is to think and feel greatly, to be free from self-consciousness. If you depends on the expression, you will miss the full significance of Life. If you love someone, you are concerned with the person rather than with love. When you love someone intensely, in that love the “you” and the “I” have no reality . (5)

And now that this love has attained clarity, all those who expected to be carried away on a flood of emotion, feel annoyed and deceived. Many are even appalled. What? Is that man attached to none? How can one be more attached to love than to the object of ones love? As for the idea of a love without an object, it belongs only to the realms of abstraction.

Here, as always, they think in terms of two alternatives : either a love which is attachment, or a self-deluding love which flees from every object and shuts itself up in its own egotism. But here, as always, comes the simple answer, too simple indeed, since it is not the dictation of an isolated centre of consciousness and has nothing in common with the world of the isolated individuals :

To me, your idea of friendship is wrong. A man whose heart and mind are closed can only be opened by love for a few ; such a man demands friends, because he relies on them for his comfort, consolation, satisfaction. I do not crave to possess friends because in me I hold nothing specially for the few as against the rest. (5)

Then the egos, disillusioned, withdraw from him. Yet to the extent that each succeeds in stripping away the self, he finds that love, which is its own eternity, a point like the point of a needle, unfathomable, limpid, incandescent, incapable of being measured, and with neither beginning nor end.

Love has gone beyond its song.
THE CALL OF LIBERATION

It was in January 1927 that Krishnamurti, who had been united, the year before, with the adorable image, the object of all his seeking, finally saw the vanishing of the dream-symbols. He awoke to consciousness of 'what is', and suddenly myths and symbols disappeared. It was not an illumination fraught with dreams, but, on the contrary, the dispersal of the shadows of his dream. Illumination, he says, is the discovery of the true value of each thing.

It was as simple as that. It was, in his relationship with the world, the perception of the truth of everything. But, simple as this definition of human achievement may be, do we realise what it must mean in the way of complete stripping of oneself? Whatever be the elements of consciousness : environment, collective past, individual past, culture, memory, becoming, duration, desires, and even the feeling that 'one is something', it all acts as a conditioning agent. Nothing of this, however, should exist, if we want direct perception to take place. All we are made of cries out that such a state is impossible. Krishnamurti states that it 'is' in the sense that its existence is not dependent on causal factors.

It may be legitimate and even necessary not to accept such a statement without seeing what is its nature, but it is not legitimate to distort the man and his message, to sweeten them up, on the pretext that they are exaggerated. Whether we think Krishnamurti exaggerates or not, we must take him as he is, including his statements. A number of his friends, still hypnotised by an obsolete myth created by ignorance, have surrounded him with a supernatural aura, though his position, however unusual, is very simple. But when his attitude discouraged such deification, they fell into the opposite extreme, and spoke of him as a poet, a philosopher, a writer, a speaker, in order not to alienate those who consider Buddha or Jesus divine and supernatural. The dreams of the early Krishnamurti enthusiasts gave way to a process of de-divinisation, which was directed at Krishnamurti alone, and took care not to touch Buddha or Christ and the rest of the divine hierarchy! It, however, in the scale of greatness, and among invented categories, we reduce Krishnamurti to the status of a man pure and simple, well and good, but then the entire conception of the divine should be destroyed, with all its hierarchies, its Messiahs, its Saviours, and all the rest. Otherwise, no. There is no other God than man made perfect, says Krishnamurti. If he is not a Messiah, it is because there is no Lord to anoint anyone.

If those who still believe in the reality of myths and in a real distinction between the divine and the human, the sacred and the profane, find themselves struggling against Krishnamurti, alongside former friends, who for so long wished him to be an emissary, a mediator between the two worlds, this is because he has taken it upon himself to bring to earth the whole of the divine. According to him, not only does every liberated man achieve the truth, in the way a Christ or a Buddha does, and not only is he himself definitely and entirely liberated, but every man can and must liberate himself, provided that his desire is intense enough to enable him to discover his own method of doing so. Do so he can and must, since this is the only state in which man can be a creative being.

Krishnamurti therefore denies the divine and the mythical only because he integrates them and scatters them as awakening scatters dreams. Those who do not free themselves from their conditioning can scarcely attain to this negation through affirmation or to this destruction through consummation. It is as difficult for those who are satisfied with their materialist outlook to grasp his teaching, as for those who dream their myths, their symbols, their metaphysics. Both camps are compelled to consider Krishnamurti as opposing them, both missing the import of his teaching and the psychological phenomenon which is at its source.

This is the debate we have been witnessing since he began to teach in 1927, a debate which is dramatic, violent, obstinate, many-sided, and incapable of solution. Every question put to him is put in terms of myth, and comes from the regions of the 'I', that is, from states of consciousness still in the realms of dreaming. One single yes or no, however, would mean the end of his freedom, his being put in a cage. To reply in terms of yes or no to a question derived from the mistaken world of conditioning would mean recognising its premises, accepting its data, and would once more incarcerate the consciousness within the religious dream, as men have done throughout the centuries . . . or deny liberty, which would also become a dream, the same dream, almost unchanged.

For months and years the aim of this debate was to drag Krishnamurti away from the one question which was vital to him : his message, and to make him concentrate on himself, on his person, his being : 'Who are you?' Failing to see how absurd such a question was, since it assumed the reality of a personality and the possibility of knowing it, people tormented the man in the hope of extracting from him some admission, an affirmation of his divine nature, or an abdication. Was Krishnamurti the 'instrument' of a superior being, Christ or Buddha, or had he become Christ himself, or Buddha? Some may consider such Byzantinism ridiculous, but the question was a serious one, involving as it did, the problem of the significance of the human being. The problem however was wrongly stated, and therefore the question, like all others of the same type, failed to elicit from Krishnamurti either a positive or a negative reply

page 70 – 72

a priest in one of the sects that had grown up around him with what amounted to a plea :

'I became a priest', he said, 'because I sought the truth and thought that I could serve it in this way. You say that truth cannot be organised, that religions are the congealed thoughts of men and that they do not lead to the truth. Now it is truth that I love. I shall do anything to attain to it. If I must renounce my priesthood and abjure my faith, I shall do so at once. I have confidence in you. I feel that you really do possess the truth of which you speak. What must I do? '

'You must not abjure your faith because of anything that I say. Why do you wish to leave your Church?', said Krishnamurti.

The man pondered. Then : 'That's right,' he said, 'Why should I leave the Church?'

He went away. He was satisfied. Since then he has been explaining that he was told by Krishnamurti himself that there was nothing in his teaching to justify him in leaving the Church.

Krishnamurti was asked why he constantly created misunderstanding about himself.

People ask me questions so that can tell them if they are right or wrong… If I answered yes or no, they would make it into a new religion. If they wish to understand they will see that they must not act on account of anything that I say, but from their own convictions. And if they understand what I say, they will themselves know what they must do with their dogmas and their doctrines …

This example is typical of the relations which are set up between Krishnamurti and those who surround him. One could almost say that between him and almost everyone who has approached him some kind of misunderstanding has arisen. The faithful adherents of countless cults, far from leaving their churches, clung to them more closely than ever. They went every year to hear Krishnamurti and succeeded in adapting his words to fit their private dreams. Each member of his audience, each of his friends, interpreted what he said in his own way, fitting it into his own world. It must however be stated, if we are to be objective, that his behaviour has today dispelled a lot of clouds and dreams, and can be understood by a large number of individuals in the right way. Owing to the clearness of the message and the feeling of freedom it conveyed to those who listened, it has risen above the indescribable confusion which threatened to stultify it, to emerge at last now, clearer than ever on account of the struggle it has had to face.

Here is Krishnamurti, however, in 1927, surrounded by thousands of people who have made themselves one with him in his search, without understanding him too well, yet having a foreboding of his coming victory. On the one hand, their own search is going on in a reverse direction to his, for whereas his own is made up of rebellions, doubts, and refusals to obey, in short, of successive liberations, their own is limited more and more to being merely the sentimental, mythical, Messianic wait for the arrival of a Consoler, a Mediator, whom they can adore whilst shedding tears of happiness. On the other hand, however, this waiting multitude, the pressure, the faith in him, spurs him on, makes him persevere in his attempt, and produces in him at times states of exaltation and of exasperation, which provoke explosions of extreme violence. Rising then, he shakes these amorphous masses, which can only wait. He cries out to them:

What have you, with your phrases, with your labels, with your books, achieved?

How many people have you made happy, not in the passing things, but in the ways of the Eternal ?

Have you given the Happiness that lasts, the Happiness that is never failing, the Happiness that cannot be dimmed by a passing cloud?

You must ask yourself what you have done.

It is very gratifying and very satisfying to call ourselves by different names and different types, and to segregate ourselves, and to think that we are different from the rest of the world.

But, if you are all these things, have you saved one from sorrow ?

Have any of you given me happiness – me, the ordinary person ?

Have any of you saved me sorrow ?

Have any of you given me the nourishment of heaven when I was hungry ?

Have any of you felt so deeply that you could throw yourself into the place of the person who is suffering ?

What have you produced, what have you brought forth ?

What is your work ?

Why should you be different because you belong to different societies, different sects ? …

In what are you different from myself ?

What is your work and what is your purpose ?

What have you done with your days? (10)

At last he identifies himself with 'that' which he has always been seeking, that reality in which the feeling of the 'l' exists no longer, and which more even than genius or intuition is the very source of all creative ability.

In all simplicity he says so. And at once it becomes of importance to him to show that the way of freedom lies in each of us. Not only is the conquest of genius possible, but more even than that, the whole of knowledge lies open to man, since we ourselves are the cause of suffering and ignorance, and we only have to see ourselves as we really are, to put an end to it. But at his very first words misunderstanding breaks loose. For he has emerged from the dreams, myths, symbols, systems of magic and religions, which we have for several centuries been producing for the purpose of avoiding seeing ourselves as we really are. Those who surround him have already a mythical explanation with regard to him, which allows them to petrify in their lazy little egocentricity. He shall be their consoler, their mediator. At once he explains that it is not so, that he is not, has never been, and never shall be the mediator between another consciousness and truth, for there is no need for a mediator between man and absolute truth: only his own ignorance and his refusal to meet it face to face stand in the way. The idea of a mediator implies the idea of somebody superior, and that is but a projection of our 'I'. Between us and our projection there is nothing, except our own desire to exalt ourselves, and to last permanently.

This misunderstanding was impossible to clear. One of the reasons for the difficulty, too, was that Krishnamurti found himself unable to explain in terms of reason what had happened within him. He became able to do so only later, gradually, and after much effort. He had, bit by bit, to invent a language, no element of which had hitherto existed as a part of human culture.

His listeners tormented him with anguished questions about himself, for if truth can have no mediator, what becomes of religions? And the way in which he fought to preserve the truth, was in itself a lesson.

If the consciousness of self is still only a state of dreaming, whatever worlds of ideas or feeling it builds up, and if all that men, still prisoners of their 'I', have ever aspired to, is an awakening beyond myth and symbol, Krishnamurti is that awakening itself. He has become one with it, and with that which men, under a thousand aspects of the divine, have always adored. This is what men, in fact, invoke, and to it, in their religions, they pray. We can see, in fact, that it has never been a question of anything else but this, this awakening out of the fog of consciousness of self – that is, of unconsciousness. Consciousness is therefore not a state in which one finds replies to the questions one raises (Who made the universe ? etc.) but a state in which the one who raises such questions is no more.

Krishnamurti thus faces resolutely all the questions to which people would like him to reply in terms of yes or no. Those who are really suffering from the present state of the world, will not ask themselves who the teacher is, nor if the man who has something to say is a teacher or not, when in any case no one knows what he is. Such labelling is absurd.

It is perfectly simple for me to go out into the world and teach. The people of the world are not concerned with whether it is a manifestation, or an indwelling, or a visitation into the tabernacle prepared for many years, or Krishnamurti himself . . . (10)

People suffer, and wish to know whether they are being given something real, whether one really has something to tell them, not who one is – which is an unreal and therefore an insoluble problem. Round Krishnamurti, however, there is growing a vast conglomeration of people who have nothing to give but who think they are helping the world, by presenting him as a Messiah, whom they do not understand.

You have not found the Truth for yourselves, you are limited, and yet you are trying to set other people free. How are you going to do it? How are you going to discover what is true, what is false, what is the World-Teacher, what is reality?. . .

Suppose a certain person was able to tell you that I am the World-Teacher, in what way would it help, in what way would it alter the Truth? In what way would understanding come to your heart, and knowledge come to your mind ?

Now you are waiting for the Truth to come out of one person. You are waiting for that truth to be developed, to be forced upon you by authority, and you are worshipping that person instead of the Truth.

When Krishnamurti dies, which is inevitable, you will make a religion, you will set about forming rules in your minds, because the individual, Krishnamurti, has represented to you the Truth. So you will build a temple, you will then begin to have ceremonies, to invent phrases, dogmas, systems of beliefs, creeds, and to create philosophies. If you build great foundations upon me, the individual, you will be caught in that house, in that temple, and so you will have to have another Teacher come and extricate you from that temple, pull you out of that narrowness in order to liberate you. But the human mind is such that you will build another temple round Him, and so it will go on and on. . . (10)

And yet Krishnamurti is determined to smash this fatal determinism. His song of liberation is also a cry of revolt. He will not be imprisoned. He will not be put in a cage. He will not be trapped.

I do not want to be bound, because that means limitation. You cannot bind the air. You can hold it, you can pollute it, you can put poison in that air, but the air which is outside, which is for all, you can never control. I am not going to be bound by anyone. I am going on my way, because that is the only way. I have found what I wanted, I have been united with my Beloved, and my Beloved and I will wander together the face of the earth. (10)

But despite such violence, he had to fight for years, breaking, every moment, the interlocked chains, innumerable and clinging, of the mesh in which thousands sought to trap him. The fight is of universal significance to those who followed step by step and day by day the unceasing struggle. It sums up all the battles which the human being has had to wage throughout history to free himself from myths. Krishnamurti assumes therein an aspect for which history seems to offer no equivalent. One can say, in a general way, that for almost four years, all the questions put to him were attacks designed to make him say a single word which would have led him, in spite of himself, to assume an authority which he refused to accept. Every method was employed, consciously or unconsciously: cunning, violence, direct attack, treachery, tendencious interpretation, insinuation, the linking of opposed ideas in order to give the appearance of a tacit acceptance, the stressing of one point of view only, which seemed to demand that one should make a choice.

Great throngs surged around this man whom already they had made divine, and who seemed, so to speak, to be on nodding terms with all the gods; who asserted that he had become one with the absolute Truth to which these gods themselves aspire; and who, at one and the same time, refused to give up his hold on his celestial gains, or admit their divinity. They wished, in the struggle, to impose on him one of the two alternatives: either release his divine prey, so that, like balloons, they might ascend again into the heavens, since he was determined to be a man in the most natural sense of the word; or to allow himself to be carried away by the balloons and make for the celestial roof and take his seat in the place reserved for him. Countless people, torn by religious anguish, held out to him every possible trap with this end in view, traps into which they persisted in falling themselves, in their passion to reconcile the irreconcilable. His own youthful writings were produced. He was provoked in public by personal and intimate questions. He was accused of pride, of hardness of heart. The rumour was spread that The Master who was to speak through him had withdrawn from his rebellious disciple. Explanations were published of his case to prove that the very nature of his message made it necessary that he should become the victim of the illusion of identification, but that it was better to sift out and reject whatever was peculiar to him and opposed to the great occult tradition, and so on and on. . .

These attacks (a chronicle of which would constitute precious documentary evidence of the determination of men to manufacture myths) never made Krishnamurti hesitate, and the struggles brought out the teaching of the period much better than the texts. His determination in ever returning, with a precision that was never lacking, to the only point that is essential to him, and his ability to avoid being nailed down to a position which would, by defining him, have conferred on him, despite himself, some authority, were astonishing.

Has he created the impression that in opposing anything, he is in favour of the opposite? He returns to the subject and states that he is opposed to the opposite as well; the theory and doctrine which were about to arise and invoke his authority, crumble. Not only is this man not afraid to disappoint, but he seems to want to disappoint, in spite of his listeners. Not only does he refuse to allow a religion to be founded, but he fights desperately to destroy the basis of a religion which had already been founded on him. I have shattered the rock on which I grew, he writes in one of his poems. Nothing is more true, from any point of view, and his teaching is the result of this victory.

Had he not found truth, had truth not been accomplished in him, and had he simply wished to give up an undeserved authority, his task would have been simple enough. But this was different. He found the source and destroyed what had been prepared for its capture. Everything was ready. The apostles were there, waiting. And rituals, liturgies, doctrines, congregations. All that had grown up round him, around his search, and his inner certainty. Sixteen years of preparation were completed, which, in India, in Europe, in America, in Australia, in forty countries throughout the world, had succeeded in creating a favour ready to flare up. Now all was in ruins. Had Krishnamurti not freed himself totally, absolutely and definitely, from myth, he would have used that instrument of domination that was offered him. Transforming it, of course, (some sort of transformation was expected of him), he would, especially in India, have assumed the role of a religious reformer. Such was his power that a word from him would have sufficed to electrify hundreds of thousands of people, who instinctively recognised in him his prodigious attainment and wished it to be divine. His certainty must have been very great to enable him, far from falling into the trap of sentimental compassion, to have the courage to deny all consolation to these crowds, to make himself disappointing, to allow them no faith, no escape, but to force each one back to the point they all desired to flee from – self. The one word of certainty they expected in order to believe, the yes or the no, was never uttered.
THE CONQUEST OF POWERLESSNESS

1928. This 'absolute truth', 'life', 'essential reality' which Krishnamurti speaks of, does not yet seem to be understood by anyone. It is all vague, and Krishnamurti apparently has the annoying gift of using words capable of as many interpretations as there are people to listen to him. Despite these difficulties, many observers begin to have confidence in him, for the effects of that internal upheaval in him are already apparent. His attitude gives rise to no misconceptions. His position as regards what was expected of him is clear, and as regards metaphysical and religious traditions, he is obviously beginning resolutely to detach himself from them. His method is also beginning to take shape, a way of realisation which demands on the part of the individual full adherence to everyday experience.

At this period he is not yet giving us a psychological explanation of this truth, but precious indications which will permit him subsequently to re-define his terms, when they have become more exact. Although his point of view is not coordinated into any ideology, it is nevertheless clear. The truth of which he speaks is not a static object. It will never be open to definitions. It will have no existence in the world of ideas. Only the daily incidents of life will give it birth. Nothing therefore could better clarify it, than the struggles which then raged between Krishnamurti and those who surrounded him in their anguish.

How can he say that he has no 'disciples' when 'authorities' have already announced themselves to be his chosen apostles?

I say again that I have no disciples. Everyone of you is a disciple of the Truth if you understand the Truth and do not follow individuals. I have no followers. I hope you do not consider yourselves as my followers, for if you do you will be perverting and betraying the Truth which I maintain. . . You look to discipleship in order to be encouraged or discouraged, in order to lean upon and to be protected by someone else; and, friend, when you depend on another, woe to your life!. . . The only manner of attaining Truth is to become disciples of the Truth itself without a mediator. . . The labels which you adore have no meaning. I know you will all feel doubt with regard to what I am saying, feel uncertain of my statements, but, friend, I say that Truth has nothing to do with the petty, tyrannical personalities whom you worship, whoever they be. (13)

But if he has no disciples, will he at least make use of the ritual which has been prepared for him.

I still maintain that all ceremonies are unnecessary for spiritual growth. How glad you would be if I were to say in a very authoritative manner that they are or that they are not necessary! How delighted you would be if I said, 'Please go on performing your ceremonies', or else, 'Please cease performing your ceremonies' – then you could feel at rest. Because I do not say that, because I do not base what I say on authority, you are puzzled, and in your anxiety there is confusion of purpose, which emphasizes the unessential and loses sight of the essential. I say that all ceremonies are unessential for the fulfilment of life. But you will say, 'What about the ceremonies of the Liberal Catholic Church and Co-Masonry?' Friend, you must decide. It is not for me to decide. How happy you would be if I decided for you! You are all like little children that cannot stand on their own feet and walk by themselves. You have been preparing for seventeen years, and you are caught in your own creation. Do not use me as an authority, do not say that Krishnamurti disapproves of ceremonies. I neither approve not disapprove. If you want to perform ceremonies you will perform them, and that is a reason sufficient in itself; if you do not want to perform them you will not perform them; and again, that is a reason sufficient in itself. These difficulties only arise when you are trying to obey, when you are frightened – frightened that you may lose the spiritual manna which you think exists in your particular organisation. No organisation, however seasoned in tradition, however well-established, contains the Truth. (13)

It had been said that a World-Teacher would come and speed up evolution, and now Krishnamurti says that one can free oneself at all stages of evolution! More: he states that 'becoming' is a mistake, and that the sole true state is the state of timelessness.

I say that liberation can be attained at any stage of evolution by a man who understands and that to worship stages, as you do, is not essential. As you have snobbery in the world, and pay reverence to aristocratic titles, so you have spiritual snobbery; there is not much difference between the two. So you must develop your understanding and your desire to attain and forget all the stages and the people who are at those stages. Of what value are they to you? (13)

This disdain of hierarchical, religious, metaphysical and occult gradations, this refusal to recognise the various degrees which all traditions, in one form or another, consider as obligatory for those in search of spiritual salvation, this negation of the effectiveness of all evolution is difficult to accept.

Has he not one teaching for the masses and another for the chosen disciples?

I have no chosen disciples. Who are the masses? Yourselves. It is in your minds that the distinctions exist between the masses and the chosen ones, between the outside world and the inner world. It is in your minds that you corrupt step, down the Truth. (13)

But if he recognises, no hierarchy, where does he place himself? Is his consciousness not simply a fragment of Christ's consciousness?

Friend, you are playing with these things. To you they are not vital but to me they are vital. I am concerned with Truth and with the awakening of the desire in each one of you to discover that Truth. You are concerned with the consciousness of Krishnamurti. How can you tell when you know neither Krishnamurti nor the Christ? I do not know who tells you these things, but how you are all caught up in the lovely designs of words!. . . Friend, do not concern yourself with who I am; you will never know. I do not want you to accept anything that I say. I do not want anything from any of you; I do not desire popularity; I do not want your flattery, your following. . . (13)

Never had a master been seen, who made such efforts to dismiss disciples and create doubt around him. Yet never does he reveal greatness more real than when he projects the question back into the very conscience of the person raising it, awakening doubt and dismay, like a condemnation. And at last he encounters the question, clear, precise, direct and agonised, which 2,000 years ago was put by doubt, and stilled, explained away, by the evidence which gave birth to a faith:

- Are you Christ come back to earth?

And the answer comes at once, clear, lucid and terrible.

- Friend, who do you think I am?

There will never be any other answer. Thus the debate on the subject of the being that is Krishnamurti will gradually die away, absurd as it is, though only in so far as men's beliefs, their religious and non-religious denials and affirmations are absurd, and only to the extent that it is absurd that men should not know what a human being is. By his attitude and replies, Krishnamurti has riveted investigation and doubts precisely on this point: everyone's person, the person each must dissolve, must, so to speak, tear to pieces, before understanding the meaning of the question: 'Who are you?'

Are we to understand that we must have no fear of following out to the end what is implied in his words?

Why have you fear? What are you afraid of? Afraid that what I say may be the Truth? Afraid to give up those things that you have clung to for so long? How do you think to find any thing in life if you are afraid to carry your thoughts and feelings to their ultimate conclusion? …

Unite with life and you will unite with every thing. How can you unite with life? Not by creating complications, but by creating that burning desire for Truth which destroys all complications. And you say: How am I to be in low with life? Gather experience. How am I to gather experience? Invite it. How am I to invite it? Do not seclude yourself from life. (13)

Yet though Krishnamurti's attitude is already compelling conviction, in the sense that it is impossible to doubt the existence of the truth into which he has entered, and though, when he speaks, he employs every means to lend support to such conviction: infinitely varied intonation of voice, intensity of concentration and restrained ardour of gesture, it must be admitted that the words coming to us from that period are valuable, as far as the essence of his message is concerned, but only as clues.

This 'salvation', this 'liberation' of 'life' ; this 'establishing of the eternal goal within ourselves', the goal which, like a compass on a lost ship, must guide us in achieving our goal (setting it up within, so as to reach it); this 'freedom' which is 'happiness', which is 'truth', which is 'eternity', the 'absolute' within which all conflict between good and evil, the individual and the social, ceases; this 'understanding of life' which is to make us our own masters, since it is the 'summation of all intelligence'; all these words remain within the realm of the undefined simply because they refer to something which is unknown.

In 1927, therefore, the words Krishnamurti uses may have the defect of being vague. In 1932 he will use words which are precise, and will be understood even less! In 1927 he speaks of a liberated life, the nature of which is not known. In 1932 he will explain that man must free himself of the self. By virtue of these words, then, which have become more precise, the message will escape all interpretation and compromise. It will no longer be possible to take refuge in mythological dreams: and the Krishnamurti of 1927, who seemed more accessible, will be missed. The 'search for life' seemed to offer a divine adventure, a sentimental wave of adoration, an easy way of being carried off into some Nirvana. To free oneself of the self by concentration of all one's faculties, and by detaching oneself from all one clings to, and to transform this adventure into destruction of the universe of which one is made, that is what becomes incomprehensible, inacceptable, and, above all terrifying, as the words become clearer.

The plainer the message, the less it is understood, owing to the resistance already set up. Nevertheless, even with his earlier words, we must be on our guard not to take advantage of their vagueness in order to interpret, or dilute, the message. It is already an irreducible whole. We can understand the Krishnamurti of 1927 only if we reconcile ourselves to his truth as absolute. We must accept him as he is or not at all. From 1927 on, there is no 'evolution' of Krishnamurti. The whole does not develop. There is, and always will be development in his expression. But to see things as they are is not evolution; it is a rebirth, moment by moment, which has neither past nor future. It is a drive constantly arising out of itself, new and complete in itself. So we cannot make up our minds about it from the futile descriptions which Krishnamurti tries to give of this truth, but only from the hints he gives about how to seek, and especially from the actual results, in action.

It can be seen therefore, that if we wish to understand the core of his message throughout this initial period of his teaching, we have to relate the words that have come down to us to Krishnamurti himself, charging them with the full significance of his experience. The phrases, for example, 'establish the eternal goal within ourselves', and 'use this goal as a means', might be devoid of significance, whereas they constitute a short cut across the spirals of time. This is the vision of the reality which Krishnamurti has given us. He achieved a consummation of duration in one timeless stroke of insight into consciousness. He destroyed belief in the necessity of evolution. He showed that man could emerge from his dream and liberate himself from himself as a creator of symbols and myths, that such dissolution of the past is possible only in the present, and that to pursue truth in some future, or on some subtler planes of consciousness, is an illusion. He demonstrated clearly this telescoping of past and future in the now, which alone is 'all there is'. He brought those who listened to him towards the central point of this process of telescoping. And that central point, for lack of words, we may term it 'goal' if we like, but a goal which is central, which is moving, which is only now, which is the total of past and future. That point is in us, it is 'us', with our capacity to be aware of 'what is'. It is the opposite of all finality. And Krishnamurti proved as soon as he began to teach, despite the irrational element involved, that it was possible of waking up others to a perception of the timeless state with which he had become one.

Just as a sleeper would hear a voice in his dream, which would itself become the center of the dream and begin to chase the clouds across time, the clouds and the time both figments of the dream, so Krishnamurti’s listeners could hear his voice, through their conditioned dreamlike consciousness, the voice which would start in them the process of their own awakening.

The intense atmosphere which had, despite him, grown up round Krishnamurti must not be forgotten, affecting, as it did, the form taken by his teaching. He had discovered, not ideas, or facts, but a state. It is obvious therefore, that the immediate result of this discovery was in the way he responded to his environment. It is in this light that his message of that period must be considered.

… Liberation in its absolute sense is a liberation that is the outcome of all experience and not the mere destruction of feelings. And such a liberation is necessary for the ultimate, the final, the absolute happiness. I mean by that, happiness which is the accumulation of intelligence, the power of greatness, the creative power of genius. . .

The other day I was talking to a man in Bombay, who, after a lengthy discussion, said to me: What you are saying will bring about supermen who will stand on their own feet, who will create order for themselves, who will be the absolute rulers for themselves; but what will happen to the man who is down below, who depends on outside authority, on crutches, who is forced, urged to a particular morality which may or may not suit him? I answered him: Take what is happening in the world at the present time. The strong, the violent, the powerful, the rigid, the men of power and strength are at the top, and the weak, the tender, the struggling are below. Now put that in contrast to the tree whose sustaining power, whose strength lie in its deep roots, which are all hidden away below, and on the top there are the delicate leaves, the tender shoots, the weak branches. In human society, as it is at present constituted, the strong and the powerful are supported by the weak, whereas in nature the strong and the powerful are below to sustain the weak. So long as you look at every problem with a twisted and a crooked mind. . . you will accept the present conditions; whereas I look at the problems from the other point of view.

Because you are not convinced in your own knowledge, you are repeating authority, you are bolstering up by quotations the authority of the past against something new. Against that argument I have nothing to say. But if you look at life from a point of view that is unbiassed, that is not warped by an authority, that is not sustained by the knowledge of others, but that is upheld by your own culture, your own understanding, by your own affection, then you will understand what I am saying, for the meditation of the heart is understanding.

Now personally – and I hope you will understand what I am saying and not misunderstand it – I have no belief and I have no tradition. That has always been my attitude towards life. As life is different from day to day, and as I want to understand life from day to day, it is no good having a belief and a tradition which bind me and prevent me from comprehending life.

You can attain freedom wherever you are, but that means that you must have the strength of a genius. For a genius after all is a person who grows out of his circumstances, who is beyond his circle. So if a person thinks that here or elsewhere he cannot develop his unique perfection, before he leaves this or any other place, before finally deciding, let him understand that wherever he is, if he is not strong enough, his circumstances will drown him; that wherever he is, if he is strong enough, he can grow to perfection. . . You will reply: I have not the power. . . that is just my point of view: in order to discover the power in yourself, you must go through all experience, but you do not want to do it. (1)

But how are the weak, the exploited, those in most need of it, to be helped to face this liberation?

By showing them how to revolt intelligently towards a purpose, towards the attainment of that freedom which is essential for all. It is not enough to make of industry a wonderful thing, to make the workers comfortable, to give them leisure; they would still be bound by that same limitation. Ford is giving them leisure, making conditions ideal, and many, many industrialists are doing the same thing, and yet they are only decorating the cage, they are supplying things which will but encourage useless desires. And as long as those desires exist, they are sure to be poisonous systems throughout the world. My concern is to utilise the desire, in order to make man free, and not merely to decorate the gilded case of civilisation. (1)

So the social, moral, religious and traditional armours, apparently designed to support, assist and protect the weak, to guide them and lead them towards a better life, are in fact just what prevents them from confronting direct experience of life. It is these shelters from naked, immediate experience, which men in their weakness and fear look for, that in fact cripple them. They become the pawns of power, of spiritual and material exploitation. One cannot fail to see at Krishnamurti's steady behaviour a clear consciousness and a revolutionary proof of the necessity of a states in which man, perceiving the root cause of the exploitation of man by man, shall put a stop to it.

The main cause of the present state of affairs, of which the symptoms are fear, is the isolation in which each individual finds himself within his 'I'. It is the circle of self-consciousness which separates him from his essence, his true genius, his liberation, his happiness.

Have no fear. Most people in the world – it does not matter who they are – are bound by fear of going wrong, fear of heaven and hell, fear of approval or disapproval, and so all the time they are fearing. When you realise that there is no such thing as good or evil, that there is no such thing as heaven and hell, that there is no such thing as failure, because everything is a matter of experience, then fear disappears. So liberation is the conquering of fear. For it is fear that binds, that warps, that perverts. If somebody told me that I was going to hell, it would not make any difference to me. If somebody told me that I was doing wrong, it would make no difference to me, because I am not afraid. But most people are afraid of conditions which they have not tested. And you can only test them by the knowledge which you gain from experience. If you feel fear, face it. Fear comes when you have a dark corner in your mind or in your heart in which you keep unsolved problems. It is like this. You never go to a temple with your solved problems. You go to a church or temple to worship or to pray, when there is a problem confronting you to which you cannot find a solution. That is what religious have become – a peg on which to hang all your unsolved problems. (1)

If, by life, we mean a metaphysical infinite, this is obviously the opposite of what Krishnamurti means by the word.

This life, which is eternal, which is source and goal, beginning and end, and yet, has neither beginning nor end, this life which belongs to all and to everything, is not a beyond, or a super-natural presence, nor a cosmic consciousness, nor a universal intelligence, nor in any way a metaphysical being. It is, at every moment, the sum total of all 'what is'. It is therefore the all, looked at in a simple and direct way. This all, which is life, has neither cause nor finality, but what has a cause and an end is our 'I'. Our 'I', which is at the same time physical, biological, psychological and social, is a shell which shuts us out of the presence of things as they are. We can only break through that shell by experience. Experience must be met with all our being as a part of ourselves, because, if we refuse a part of ourselves to it, our blindness will take refuge in just that part. Experience therefore consists in disrupting the 'I' as shelter.

In this sense we can say that Krishnamurti is an experience. But how can it be awakened in others? First, he says, disturb them mentally and emotionally. It is true that we can understand the experiences of others, but for this we need a power of affection which few possess. If you possess this immense affection, life and the understanding of life become simple.

How can a man, the average person, debased and destroyed by the cruellest of social systems, find in himself the ability to understand?

Do not say that the working people are mediocre. They are not. The people who are satisfied with dogmas, with beliefs, with sects, who have put aside suffering and equally joy – such people are mediocre, not the working man, not the man who does not know where he will get his next meal. He is not mediocre. The man who knows where to get all his meals is generally mediocre.

Now most people in the world imagine that Truth is hidden away from general existence, from the ordinary human mind, from the ordinary man of thought and feeling – imagine that they must retire from the world to seek Truth, that they must acquire certain qualities, certain knowledge, experience, certain sorrows and certain pleasures. I want to show that the moment you understand life as it is taking place around each one of you, then you understand Truth. . . There is no God except a man purified, and there is no Power exterior to himself which control him – no guide other than himself. There is no heaven or shell, good or evil, except that which he creates himself and hence man is solely responsible to himself, to no one else. (1)

To acquire this full sense of responsibility, which is the first stage to absolute truth, he must reject all spiritual authority, all tradition, all belief. He must be discontented, in revolt against all established truths, and, in addition, simple, which does not mean primitive. True simplicity is the result of great experience, great suffering, great struggle. He must bring together, unify all those parts of his being which he has hitherto divided, body, thought and feeling.

All this seems acceptable. But it must, still be applied to oneself. And begun at once. Waiting until tomorrow will alter nothing in the present, which is here, now, in its totality. Today is already the tomorrow of countless previous days! But to begin at once, one must have the desire to do so and become conscious of what one really is, factually, not in intention, at each moment of the day. And one has to understand that this awareness must be constantly alert and impersonal so as to be vulnerable to the challenges of life. One must go beyond the stage of experience and even of thought. This is what constitutes that true conversion which is the 'establishment of the eternal goal within ourselves'.

The establishment of the eternal goal is of primary importance for one who desires to disentangle himself from all the complications of life – not the goal of another, nor the vision of another, but the goal that is born of his own experience, his own sorrow, suffering and understanding. Such a goal, when once it is established, will throw light on the confusion of all thought, and thereby make clear the purpose of life . (11)

Here is obviously the purpose of individual human life which is at stake. This point is clear enough, however inadequate the words 'establishment' and 'goal' may be.

Because the individual has not solved his own problem, the problem of the world is not solved. The individual problem is the world problem. . . If the individual has not found his goal, the world will not find his goal. You cannot separate the individual from the world. The world and the individual are one. If the individual problem can be solved by understanding, so can the problem of the world be solved . (11)

Society, as we observe it around us, cannot be separated from ourselves, and carries within it our own internal contradictions. Those who wish to solve social problems, without having transcended in themselves the limitations set up by their conditioning, merely add to the social chaos.

According to certain religious outlooks, the social is the result of the individual, whereas according to the materialistic outlook the reverse is the case. Both these viewpoints are arbitrary, theoretical, erroneous. Let us, in this case, avoid reopening a debate as old as it is absurd.

The origin of the individualisation of consciousness into separate selves is inextricably bound up with human activity and the relationship between man and nature. These selves, to which nature has given birth, constitute a state called human, but which to Krishnamurti is still sub-human. Now, what we call civilisation is an entanglement of conflicts, and if we wish to give birth to a truly human order we must be aware of that conflicting state in ourselves, and realise that our own conflict is held within bounds of our ego as in a chrysalis which must be shattered if life has to be.

All around us we notice human beings being born, living, growing and dying immured in their individual dream. None of the tasks we undertake from within this conditioning can break the dream. Now, not only is this point of view essentially 'revolutionary' (in Krishnamurti’s sense of the word), but it provides, as we can readily understand, the psychological basis, so far lacking, for working out a radically new set of values. If we understand it, this message not only brings us the certainty that a human being exists who is free of the illusion of the 'I', but it establishes within us the conviction that this state is the only true human one. In the light of this inward dawn, we shall dispel, within ourselves and around us, the shadows of unconsciousness and of fear, God, possessions, saviours, spiritual and social hierarchies, in a word, the sub-human and the subconscious.

The sub-human creates the illusion of duration in time. The future, which is merely the prolongation of this illusion, can never bring us anything. But in the case of those who have established within themselves their deliverance, for them life becomes simple. There is no longer confusion, and time and the complications of time disappear. . .

Time is only a binder of life and the moment you are free you are beyond time. . . Each must discover his own way of attainment. There is no other truth, no other god, but that goal which each one has established for himself, which cannot be destroyed by the breath of man or by the passing whims of any god. (11)

How can we bring into harmony the intelligence, the emotions, and the body, so as to attain to this truth? `

The mind must have a goal of its own, but it must be a goal created by you yourself ; otherwise it will lead to superstition. What is the ultimate goal for the mind? It is the purification of the self, which means the development of the individual uniqueness. To gain freedom, great desire is needed. People are afraid of desire, thinking that it is something evil which must be destroyed. But it is a mistaken attitude. Desire is the motive power behind all action. . . So if you would fulfil life you must have great desires, for desire brings experience and experience leads to knowledge. If a man knows how to use desire, it will bring him to the freedom for which he longs. If desire is killed or suppressed, there is no possibility of freedom. Most people in the world have intense burning, vital desires, but instead of utilising them and training them, they either suppress them or are controlled by them. Without desire there can be no creative work. . . Mental and emotional problems are more difficult to solve, and because the way to solve these problems is so little understood, religions, creeds, and dogmas have been invented. . . Because man does not want to be free, he kills his desires. . .

A mind that is simple will understand perfection because it is part of perfection itself. . . Simplicity of mind is the greatest and most difficult thing to acquire, but in order to be simple you must have great experience. . .

What is the ultimate goal for the emotions? It is affectionate detachment. To be able to love and yet not be attached to anyone or anything is the absolute perfection of emotion. . . Love – however envious, jealous, tyrannical, selfish it may be at first is a bud that will grow into a great glory and give the scent of its perfection to every passer-by. . . You must love all and yet be detached from all, for love is necessary to the unfoldment of life. . . There are many ways of acquiring experience – one through the eyes of every passer-by, looking through the eyes of every passer-by and experiencing in imagination his sorrow, his transient pleasures. . . I have watched people who have greatly desired to help others but they do not know how to help. They are incapable of putting themselves into the place of another and so envisaging his point of view. Those who would understand the life around them. . . must develop great love and yet be detached from the bondage of that love. They must have great sympathy and yet not be bound by that sympathy. They must have great desires and yet not be slave of those desires.

What is the ultimate goal for the body? Beauty. Everyone in the world is seeking for beauty but they seek without understanding. It is essential for the body to be beautiful, but it must not be a mere shell of beauty. . . Restraint is necessary for the body – control without suppression. (11)

We must collaborate with life. Lend ourselves to it. Follow it in every expression of its power of expansion, its dynamism.

When you bind life to beliefs and traditions, to codes of morality, you kill life. . . life desires to find its freedom, the only way by which it can attain it is through experience. . . In the olden days, especially in India, those who desired to find Truth imagined that they could discover the sway by withdrawing from the aching world. . . But now you have to face life as it is, for you can only conquer life when you have a complete and not partial understanding of it. . .

Once there was a man who kept all the windows of his house well closed except one, hoping that through that window alone the sunlight would come, but it never came. That is what those people are doing who are bound by tradition, by narrow sectarian beliefs, and who think that Truth is contained in any of those beliefs. (11)

To develop this understanding in ourselves, which will at last shatter our ego, we must be in revolt. We alone can develop this power within ourselves. Life is simple and magnificent. It does not allow itself to be imprisoned within any form but the man who leans on his past is afraid of the adventure it offers him in the present. Every one throughout the world is bound by the traditions, the fears, the shame, the beliefs, the morality of the past. If you are constantly looking backwards, you will never discover Truth. The discovery of the eternal Truth lies always ahead of you. . . Cut away the bondage of the past as a woodman cuts his way through a dark forest. . . Do not live in the future nor in the dead things of yesterday, but live rather in the immediate now, with the understanding that you are a product of the past, and that by your actions of today you can control tomorrow and so become the master of evolution, and hence the master of perfection. Then you will live with greater intensity, then every second will count and every moment will be of value But you are frightened of such a present. (11)

As soon as the 'I', indeed, projects upon its past the fire of doubt, its past being nothing but itself, it destroys itself. And it is precisely to avoid destroying itself that it refuses to answer the call of the now, which is life. Yet if we wish to know the truth, above all, we must invite doubt. We must not let it creep into us, but invite it in the fulness of our being, welcome it in its magnificent cruelty. Faith stifles doubt and therefore stifles life.

For I tell you that orthodoxy is set up when the mind and the heart are in decay. But when the mind and the heart in their fullness invite doubt, then there shall be no orthodoxy, there shall be no authority, there shall be no small, petty beliefs in personalities. . . so far you have worshipped personalities. . . not the Truth itself. . . And if you have the understanding, if you have the courage to invite doubt, then you will be the true disciples of the Truth and not the disciples of an individual – as you are at present. (14)

So Krishnamurti is not the consoler. He does not reassure us. He does not placate. He is the shepherd of no flock. People wish to believe and he brings doubt. They ask him to be a support, a refuge, and he refers everyone to himself. They demand of him new hope, new faith, in short, a rejuvenation of their dreams, which have become too painful because they have too long been the repository of symbols that no longer have any validity. He brings a freedom that can be discovered only by facing ordinary common everyday life. People wanted escape, and he brings the exact opposite, responsibility.

And because hundreds of thousands of people had already conferred spiritual authority on him, he uses that faith to destroy, root and branch, the constructions of the unconscious, and brings to life a new human state, of man set free.
1929 – THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLES

Most of those who listen to him refuse this freedom. If they wanted freedom, they would not bring their problems to him. A saviour is what they want. Human cowardice never ceases to create magnificent personages, in whom it is enough to believe and who take care of the rest. The role Krishnamurti is constantly expected to play is that of stilling doubts, calming fears, consoling, soothing, lulling, taking upon himself all responsibility and at the same time opening up vistas of infinite hope ; arranging everything when things go wrong; explaining everything when nothing is understood. And he contrives to be exactly the opposite of all this.

There is nothing in common between the desire to prolong a dream, and the awakening. These two worlds cannot be reconciled. The sleeper can perceive the shaking intended to awaken him, but he transforms this perception into symbols, and reorganises his dream around this disturbance.

Almost all the members of the 'Order of the Star', which had been organised around Krishnamurti's will to awake into reality, reacted in this way. When he fully awakened, he continued for two years to shake the sleepers, and the latter continued to transform the shakings into dream symbols.

Then one day there came an end to this great struggle of myth with reality. This was when Krishnamurti deemed it possible to dissolve the Order of the Star without having thereby conferred on him, in any way, either spiritual authority or any form of power. Had he carried through this dissolution earlier it would have made way for the dream. The statement made by him on this occasion is evidence of the care he took to put pressure on none, to leave everyone free to see for himself the importance of such action.

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized ; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organise a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallised, it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others. This is what everyone throughout the world is attempting to do. Truth is narrowed down and made a plaything for those who are weak, for those who are only momentarily discontented. Truth cannot be brought down, rather the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountain-top to the valley. If you would attain to the mountain-top you must pass through the valley, climb the steps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices. You must climb towards the Truth. It cannot be 'stepped down' or organized for you. Interest in ideas is mainly sustained by organizations, but organizations only awaken interest from without. Interest, which is not born out of love of Truth for its own sake, but aroused by an organization, is of no value. The organization becomes a framework into which its members can conveniently fit. They no longer strive after Truth or the mountain-top, but rather carve for themselves a convenient niche in which they put themselves, or let the organization place them, and consider that the organization will thereby lead them to Truth.

So that is the first reason, from my point of view, why the Order of the Star should be dissolved. In spite of this, you will probably form other Orders, you will continue to belong to other organizations searching for Truth. I do not want to belong to any organisation of a spiritual kind, please understand this. I would make use of an organization which would take me to London, for example; this is quite a different kind of organisation, merely mechanical. . . I maintain that no organisation can lead man to spirituality.

If an organisation be created for this purpose, it becomes a crutch, a weakness, a bondage, and must cripple the individual, and prevent him from growing, from establishing his uniqueness which lies in the discovery for himself of that absolute, unconditioned Truth. So that is another reason why I have decided, as I happen to be the Head of the Order, to dissolve it. No one has persuaded me to this decision.

I do not want followers, and I mean this. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth. I am not concerned whether you pay attention to what I say or not. I want to do a certain thing in the world and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies. Then you will naturally ask me why I go the world over, continually speaking. I will tell you for what reason I do this: not because I desire a following, not because I desire a special group of special disciples. (How men love to be different from their fellow-men, however ridiculous, absurd and trivial their distinctions may be! I do not want to encourage that absurdity). I have no disciples, no apostles, either on earth or in the realm of spirituality.

Nor is it the lure of money, nor the desire to live a comfortable life, which attracts me. If I wanted to lead a comfortable life I would not come to a Camp or live in a damp country! I am speaking frankly because I want this settled once and for all. I do not want these childish discussions year after year.

One newspaper reporter, who interviewed me, considered it a magnificent act to dissolve an organization in which there were thousands and thousands of members. To him it was a great act because, he said: 'What will you do afterwards, how will you live? You will have no following, people will no longer listen to you'. If there are only five people who will listen, who will live, who have their faces towards eternity, it will be sufficient. Of what use is it to have thousands who do not understand, who are fully embalmed in prejudice, who do not want the new, but would rather translate the new to suit their own sterile, stagnant selves? If I speak strongly, please do not misunderstand me, it is not through lack of compassion. If you go to a surgeon for an operation, is it not kindness on his part to operate even if he cause you pain? So, in like manner, if I speak straightly, it is not through lack of real affection – on the contrary.

As I have said, I have only one purpose: to make man free, to urge him towards freedom, to help him to break away from all limitations, for that alone will give him eternal happiness, will give him the unconditioned realization of the self.

Because I am free, unconditioned, whole – not the part, not the relative, but the whole Truth that is eternal – I desire those, who seek to understand me, to be free, not to follow me, not to make out of me a cage which will become a religion, a sect. Rather should they be free from all fears – from the fear of religion, from the fear of salvation, from the fear of spirituality, from the fear of love, from the fear of death, from the fear of life itself. As an artist paints a picture because he takes delight in that painting, because it is his self-expression, his glory, his well-being, so I do this and not because I want any thing from anyone.

You are accustomed to authority, or to the atmosphere of authority, which you think will lead you to spirituality. You think and hope that another can, by his extraordinary powers – a miracle – transport you to this realm of eternal freedom which is Happiness. Your whole outlook on life is based on that authority.

You have listened to me for three years now, without any change taking place except in the few. Now analyse what I am saying, be critical, so that you may understand thoroughly, fundamentally. When you look for an authority to lead you to spirituality, you are bound automatically to build an organization around that authority. By the very creation of that organization, which, you think, will help this authority to lead you to spirituality, you are held in a cage.

If I talk frankly, please remember that I do so, not out of harshness, not out of cruelty, not out of the enthusiasm of my purpose, but because I want you to understand what I am saying. That is the reason why you are here, and it would be a waste of time if I did not explain clearly, decisively, my point of view.

For eighteen years you have been preparing for this event, for the Coming of the World-Teacher. For eighteen years you have organized, you have looked for someone who would give a new delight to your hearts and minds, who would transform your whole life, who would give you a new understanding ; for someone who would raise you to a new plane of life, who would give you a new encouragement, who would set you free – and now look what is happening! Consider, reason with yourselves, and discover in what way that belief has made you different – not with the superficial difference of the wearing of a badge, which is trivial, absurd. In what manner has such a belief swept away all the unessential things of life? That is the only way to judge : in what way are you freer, greater, more dangerous to every Society which is based on the false and the unessential? In what way have the members of this organization of the Star become different?

As I said, you have been preparing for eighteen years for me. I do not care if you believe that I am the World-Teacher or not. That is of very little importance. Since you belong to the organization of the Order of the Star, you have given your sympathy, your energy, acknowledging that Krishnamurti is the World-Teacher – partly or wholly: wholly for those who are really seeking, only partically for those who are satisfied with their town half-truths.

You have been preparing for eighteen years, and look how many difficulties there are in the way of your understanding, how many complications, how many trivial things. Your prejudices, your fears, your authorities, your churches new and old – all these, I maintain, are a barrier to understanding. I cannot make myself clearer than this. I do not want you to agree with me, I do not want you to follow me, I want you to understand what I am saying.

This understanding is necessary because your belief has not transformed you but only complicated you, and because you are not willing to face things as they are. You want to have your own gods – new gods instead of the old, new religions instead of the old, new forms instead of the old – all equally valueless, all barriers, all limitations, all crutches. Instead of old spiritual distinctions you have new spiritual distinctions, instead of old worships you have new worships. You are depending for your spirituality on someone else, for your happiness on someone else, for your enlightenment on someone else; and although you have been preparing for me for eighteen years, when I say all these things are unnecessary, when I say that you must put them all away and look within yourselves for the enlightenment, for the glory, for the purification, and for the incorruptibility of the self, not one of you is willing to do it. There may be a few, but very, very few.

So why have an organization?

Why have false, hypocritical people following me, the embodiment of Truth? Please remember that I am not saying something harsh or unkind, but we have reached a situation when you must face things as they are. I said last year that I would not compromise. Very few listened to me then. This year I have made it absolutely clear. I do not know how many thousands throughout the world – members of the Order – have been preparing for me for eighteen years, and yet now they are not willing to listen unconditionally, wholly, to what I say.

So why have an organisation?

As I said before, my purpose is to make men unconditionally free, for I maintain that the only spirituality is the incorruptibility of the self which is eternal, is the harmony between reason and love. This is the absolute, unconditioned Truth which is Life itself. I want therefore to set man free, rejoicing as the bird in the clear sky, unburdened, independent, ecstatic in that freedom. And I, for whom you have been preparing for eighteen years, now say that you must be free of all these things, free from your complications, your entanglements. For this you need not have an organization based on spiritual belief. Why have an organization for five or ten people in the world who understand, who are struggling, who have put aside all trivial things? And for the weak people, there can be no organisation to help them to find the Truth, because Truth is in everyone; it is not far, it is not near; it is eternally there.

Organizations cannot make you free. No man from outside can make you free; nor can organized worship, nor the immolation of yourselves for a cause, make you free; nor can forming yourselves into an organization, nor throwing yourselves into works, make you free. You use a typewriter to write letters, but you do not put it on an altar and worship it. But that is what you are doing when organizations become your chief concern. 'How many members are there in it?' That is the first question I am asked by all newspaper reporters. 'How many followers have you? By their number we shall judge whether what you say is true or false'. I do not know how many there are. I am not concerned with that. As I said, if there were even one man who had been set free, that were enough.

Again, you have the idea that only certain people hold the key to the Kingdom of Happiness. No one holds it. No one has the authority to hold that key. That key is your own self, and in the development and the purification and in the incorruptibility of that self alone is the Kingdom of Eternity.

So you will see how absurd is the whole structure that you have built, looking for external help, depending on others for your comfort, for your happiness, for your strength. These can only be found within yourselves.

So why have an organization?

You are accustomed to being told how far you have advanced, what is your spiritual status. How childish! Who but yourself can tell you if you are beautiful or ugly within? Who but yourself can tell you if you are incorruptible? You are not serious in these things.

So why have an organization?

But those who really desire to understand, who are looking, to find that which is eternal, without beginning and without an end, will walk together with a greater intensity, will be a danger to everything that is unessential, to unrealities, to shadows. And they will concentrate, they will become the flame, because they understand. Such a body we must create, and this is my purpose. Because of that real understanding there will be true friendship. Because of that true friendship – which you do not seem to know – there will be real co-operation on the part of each one. And this is not because of authority, not because of salvation, not because of immolation for a cause, but because you really understand, and hence are capable of living in the eternal. This is a greater thing than all pleasure, than all sacrifice.

So those are some of the reasons why, after careful consideration for two years, I have made this decision. It is not from a momentary impulse. I have not been persuaded to it by anyone – I am not persuaded in such things. For two years I have been thinking about this slowly, carefully, patiently, and I have now decided to disband the Order, as I happen to be its Head. You can form other organizations and expect someone else. With that I am not concerned nor with creating new cages, new decorations for those cages. My only concern is to set men absolutely, unconditionally free. (3)

For those around Krishnamurti who seek sincerely to understand him, this destruction of the temples is a symptom, an indication, a kind of proof of the authenticity of his liberation, though its nature still remains obscure. Truth, life, the essential, the kingdom of happiness, the kingdom of eternity, these are so many words, which might equally well have any or no meaning. At that time the meaning is impossible to understand except in terms of the impact of this truth on Krishnamurti’s life, which admit of no misunderstanding.

Krishnamurti at this period speaks of an inner experience which cannot be translated into the finite. It is so vast, so immense, that unless yon experience it yourself, it remains a mystery, a hidden secret. Today we can see that in spite of everything, that experience has emerged from the realms of mystery. It is, of course, not enough, if we are to understand and experience it, to hear that man can free himself of his individual consciousness; nor to know that the disappearance of the 'I' is merely the result of insight into the process of formation of that 'l'. But thousands of people now understand, even if somewhat dimly, that the 'I' is unreal, and are prepared to study the best means of freeing themselves of it. Thus the problem today has emerged from its mystery. The fact that it remained so long in a state of confusion, cannot be, in all fairness, the fault of Krishnamurti's audience only.

About the essence of his message, that is to say, the very nature of the 'I', and its relations to reality, Krishnamurti did not, at this period, succeed in avoiding awkward confusion. This he did not really surmount until 1931. It had taken him two years to win his freedom and destroy the temples. It was to take him two more years to build an intelligible approach, capable of being put into practice, even if only partially.

Until then, he is coherent in action, coherent in the replies he gives to the most varied questions put to him, coherent in his attitude; but when he comes to explain the psychological nature of his discovery, he is incoherent.

We have already seen above, that this destruction or non-destruction of the 'I' lends itself to all kinds of misinterpretation. These arise when we fail to understand the 'I' as antinomy, as an internal contradiction. As long as the 'I' persists, the contradiction is not solved. When the contradiction is seen as such, the 'I', which is, so to speak, merely its seed, disappears as an isolated centre of consciousness, but life remains.

We have seen above that once this phenomenon occurs, there is no disruption and discontinuity of consciousness, but a consummation of time, a synthesis of the faculties, the perception of the truth of 'what is'. At first we can believe in a purification, a liberation of the 'I' itself. And indeed, it seems that human thought had until now not gone any further than this: mystics, psychologists, yogis, philosophers, attempted to destroy the 'I', rather than to understand its process, hence, it always rediscovered and reconstituted itself in symbols, and in religious or metaphysical escapes. And re-discovering itself, it has fancied it was finding a divinity or a cosmic self, or a superego, which were merely shelters, projected by itself. From these illusions have arisen systems of thought, religions and so on. . .

Now, as early as 1927, Krishnamurti had seen through this last illusion. But as soon as he tries to explain that this death of the 'l' is a liberation, and that this boundless life is a consummation of the 'I', he fails to clear up the misunderstandings, which indeed he gives rise to, about him. In 1929 we hear him mention the incorruptibility of the self : the 'I', the self, is constantly seeking to make itself perfect, and thereby eternal and free, he says. This last phrase might occur in Vedantic tradition. And again: Truth, which is Liberation, is the harmony of the self which is calm, serene, undisturbed, pliable, eager. The individual self, the individual 'I', must become united to that self which is the creator of all things. To achieve that union, the individual 'I' has to be made perfect .

All this so much resembles Hindu metaphysical tradition, and all metaphysical illusions in general, that we cannot blame his audience for failing to understand that he meant the opposite of what he said! And it was the opposite which he meant, as we have seen above, and shall see again. This continuity of the 'I' meant, in his mind, that there had been no break, no fragmentation of consciousness. But then, dissatisfied with his formula, he invented a 'progressive I', and an 'eternal I', which were perhaps the greatest imaginative strain he imposed on his listeners. . . It was a question of making the progressive self incorruptible, that is, of making incorruptible what is in, fact corruption itself, and this operation was to lead to the eternal self ! . . .

It is not surprising that these confused attempts at explanation should not have been understood in the same way by all his listeners. Nor is it surprising either that an unsuspecting reader, even today, forms opinions as to Krishnamurti's ideas which vary according to the texts chanced upon. But it ought to be repeated that these words had no great significance, either for him or for those who really tried to understand him. The destruction of the temples was important; the rout of the hordes of disciples was important; the wrecking of the divine, of hierarchies, authority, religious nightmare, superstition, traditions and occult mystical diversions was important; the denial of all cause and all finality in the universal life was important; the desire to free the world of castes, social classes, so-called elites, and of exploitation, was important. Important too were the now countless discoveries to be made thanks to the presence of this new human state, of this human individual freed of his past, who, though he had not yet learned to express himself clearly, nevertheless was well aware of his victorious struggle against what was rising around him to stifle him at his birth.

His essential discovery was that of the value of the present moment, of the now.

Liberation is neither in the future nor in the past. It is not something to be attained in some distant future nor does it lie in the past under the control, under the domination of those who have already attained. I maintain that the now, the immediate now, holds the entire truth. The past is the ever-changing present, and to the past belong birth, renunciation, acquisition, and all the qualities that you have gained.

The past will not solve your problems nor establish harmony within yourself ; so you look to the future which becomes for you the great mystery. The future is the mystery of the 'I', the unsolved 'I', because whatever you have solved of the 'I', of the self, is past, so whatever you have not solved is the future, and hence a mystery. The future will always remain a mystery because the more you enter the future, the more mysterious it becomes and the more you are held within it.

The establishment of inner harmony is to be attained neither in the past nor in the future, but where the past and the future meet, which is the now. When you have attained that point, neither future nor past, neither birth nor death, neither time nor space exist. It is that NOW which is liberation, which is perfect harmony, to which the men of the past and the men of the future must come.

You should seek that happiness you desire neither in the future nor in the past, but now. What is the good of being companionable, full of friendship in ten years' time if you are lonely now, if every moment creates tears, sorrow, misery? When you are hungry you want to be satisfied immediately, now.

To solve the mystery of the unsolved 'I', of the self, you cannot look on the future, because the future, if you have not solved it, is never-ending; it is continuous. But to the man who understands, the solution is at that point where the past and the present and the future meet, which is now. The moment you understand, there is no mystery.

The eternity which the progressive self is seeking is neither in the past nor in the future. If it is neither in the past nor in the future, it is now. NOW is the moment of eternity. When you understand that, you have transcended all laws, limitations, karma and reincarnation. These, though they may be facts, have no value, because you are living in the eternal.

You cannot solve your problems in the future ; your fears, your anxieties, your ambitions, your deaths and your births cannot be solved either in the future or in the past, you must solve them NOW.

To live in that immediate NOW, which is eternity, you must withdraw from all trivial things that belong to the past or to the future. Your dead hopes, your false theories, your gods, everything must go, and you must live – as the flower lives, giving its perfume to everyone – fully concentrated in that moment of time, in that NOW which is neither the future nor the past, which is neither distant nor near, that NOW which is the harmony of reason and love.

That NOW is Truth, because in it is the whole consummation of life. To dwell in that NOW is true creation, for creation is poise, it is absolute unconditioned, it is the consummation of all life.

Because that NOW exists wherever you are; that NOW abides in each one, whole, complete, unconditioned. (4)

What is this 'all', which must disappear in the now? How can one rid oneself of the past? What does it consist of? What is it made of? Eventually we shall see that it is nothing but the 'I' itself, whose consciousness has nothing to support it but its past. We shall go further, into a state where thought itself ceases, where man re-creates himself within a passivity which is supremely active, perceiving the constant and ever-renewed stream of 'what is'.

To reject the past, and to forget it, are two different things. It is neither a question of retaining or rejecting memories. A memory, in any case, is of no value in itself.

To me the memory should not be memory of experience itself, but rather memory of that which is the outcome of the experience. You must forget the experience, and remember its lessons. That is true memory. That is eternal, because it is the only thing of value in the experience. That true memory is intelligence. . . Intelligence is the capacity to choose, with discrimination, with culture, that which is essential from that which is false. That intelligence is acquired through experience, through the lessons that remain after experience. The highest form of that intelligence is intuition, because it is the residue of all accumulated experiences. That is the true function of memory. (4)

If one has not assimilated the content of experience, rejecting memory is of no more value than retaining it. What is important is to bring forward into the present the conditioning of the past. This means the understanding of our real, factual and ever present motive for keeping alive our conditioning memories. The memories are of yesterday, but the motive for keeping them alive is ever of today. By understanding today's motive, we empty of their content the memories of yesterday. And this is just what, from force of habit, we do not do, for everyone leans on the past as on a wall. The individual past, the family past, the ancestral and racial past, are so many fortified entrenchments behind which people take shelter, for fear of meeting the now. In this now, suspended between earth and sky, between a past, which, when understood, ceases to exist, and a future which will never come because it will ever be the now constantly born of itself, in this fullness the 'I' staggers as in the presence of an unfathomable abyss of nothingness.

And yet this presence is the only reality, the only permanence, the only perfection, the only absolute. And if we have to adhere to it, let us not set between it and us the screen of the past, which is but the 'I', or the screen of the future, which is but a projection of the 'I', awaiting a solution.

A leap into the dark: not a rejection but an absorption of the past. An absorption, not by reabsorbing regressively, but by concentrating on the now. At the impact of the now the past crumbles: direct perception of things remains. In this perception of things as they are, the anguish of loneliness disappears, and of craving for moral support, consolation, encouragement, absolution. This now, this truth, is a danger to all organised belief, all systems of thought. He who possesses it thereby becomes an explosive to all that does not belong to it, blowing up the assembled shadows of the past which arise in defense, terrified of being destroyed. As the sun dispels the mist, so the man who lives in the present scatters 'the assembly of the dead'.

These phantoms of the past are created by fear.

It is fear that throttles, suffocates every human being. It is the phantom which follows every human being as a shadow, because he does not realise that for every action, and the result of that action, for every desire, and the fulfilment of that desire, he is wholly responsible. With that realisation fear of every kind disappears, because, the individual is absolutely master of himself.

When you have no fear you really begin to live. You live, not in the future nor in the past, neither hoping for salvation in the future nor looking to the dead past for your strength, but – because you have no fear – in the moment of eternity, which is NOW.

You are afraid of innumerable things, of convention and of what others may say. You want to reconcile the present moment with everything around you ; you want to reconcile all that has been said in the past with the present ; you want to go along in the same old way, to have your Masters, your gurus, your worships, your rites, your ceremonies, and to reconcile all these with what I am saying. You cannot by any means live both with the past and with the future. You may say, 'I am weak and so I need this support. I need someone to encourage me'. But that is not true encouragement. If you rely on someone for your happiness, for your growth, you are becoming weaker, not stronger.

Do not look for salvation from outside in any form, or you will have new conventions instead of the old. What we have to create is men who are certain of their salvation in themselves, who are strong, certain of their purpose and not looking for external comfort, external authority, external encouragement. To be so concentrated requires constant thoughtfulness.

To have that freedom from all external things, in order to discover your true substance, you must be free from fear. First of all, from the fear of salvation, because no one is going to save you except yourself. No erection of churches, creation of gods or images, no prayers, no worship, no ceremonies, are going to give you that inward understanding and tranquillity. (4)

Truth is not an achievement but a process . It is not a question of reassuring an 'l' (who feels isolated, who is afraid) by consoling it, by giving it. the feeling that it is protected, that it is sheltered from catastrophe, that it will be indefinitely prolonged in space (material possessions) and in time (spiritual possessions). No. It must itself awake its essential desire, the internal dynamic force which will set it in motion. If it seeks its salvation, then it is resisting this vital force. This resistance is the fear felt by the 'I' at the very idea that it might lose its identity. The process which can give birth to truth is on the contrary, experience, the shocks met with by the 'I' in actual life. The more the shock reveals to it its secret motivations and the defences set in motion in the deeper layers of consciousness, the more profitable is the experience. Thus only can the 'I' come to understand itself.

Here, in the practical application of his truth, Krishnamurti proves his genuineness. He seems to possess a central core which is unshakable, into which he digs, and which, despite the inexactitude of many of the words he uses (for he pays little attention to the meanings given them by others before him), allows him, where concrete questions are concerned, to act in accord with all one might expect from his message, pushed to extremes. If the meaning of this message is understood, there is no need, in fact, to be afraid of pushing it too far: it has no limits. Only then do Krishnamurti's words become creators of a new and unsuspected reality, in which whatever ideas we have disappear, revealing the secret motives which made us adopt them. And when those secret motives are understood, there is in us a possibility of creativeness, born of an intelligence which is not cleverness, but an inner freedom through which inspiration can come into being.

Inspiration, according to my idea, is keeping intelligence enthusiastically awakened. . . If you are not intelligent, you are not a great creator. . . Intelligence, to me, is the accumulation of experience. . . You can't divide intuition from intelligence in the highest sense. A clever man is not necessarily an intelligent man. . . Intuition is the highest point of intelligence and, keeping alive that intelligence is inspiration. . . Intelligence is acting suddenly. And that is my whole point. If you keep your mind, your emotions, your body in harmony, pure and strong, then from that highest point of intelligence, intuition will act. . . constantly and consciously. . . That is the only guide. Now take, for instance, poets, dramatists, musicians, all artists: they should be anonymous, detached from all that they create. I think that is the great truth. . . But most artists want their names put under the picture, they want to be admired. They want their degrees and titles. (2)

If Krishnamurti aims at giving these few very simple words the fullest meaning they can possess, this signifies that true intelligence is creative, and that it is the fruit, not of acquisition and intellectual labour, but of experience, involving the total human being: body, emotions and intellect. As it is this experience which liberates man from the prison of individual consciousness, it follows that the more man frees himself of the 'I', the more creative intelligence can express itself. Now, he can only free himself of the 'I' by understanding the cause of fear. Religions do not free man from fear; on the contrary, they provide him with a refuge. They therefore obstruct the unfolding of man's creative powers. The unconditioning of the self is a constant and conscious creative process. Man has, incidentally, gone beyond genius. The creative genius, the great poet and artist, are merely a stage in this unconditioning, which may never develop into real knowledge, if it remains within the sphere of individualism. There exists therefore a conflict between the creative genius and the 'I'. . . 'but most artists wish to put their names at the foot of their canvas'. They think it is their 'I' which is great. Their 'I' wishes to use for its own benefit the moment of inspiration, the fleeting contact with the present, when the 'I' was not there.

That eternal moment is creation. I dislike the use of the words 'active' and 'inactive', 'dynamic' and 'static' – pass the words by and see in them something potent. If you do not live in that eternal moment, you are dead to the self, to the '1', to the immensity of life. Unless you free yourself from all outside authorities, conventions, rights and wrongs, philosophies and religions, you can never come to that immediate now, which is creation.

To be liberated, to live in the realm of eternal, to be conscious of that Truth, means to be beyond birth and death – because birth is of the past and death is in the future – beyond space, beyond past and present, and the delusion of time. The man who has attained such a liberation knows that perfect harmony which is constant and eternally present; he lives unconditionally in that eternity which is now. (4)

This liberation is life itself, the life of each one, and of everything, changing yet unchangeable, constant yet variable, to which every human being, all the individual lives in the world, must come. For imperfection creates individuality, and perfection which is freedom is the flower of every human being.

Later, going beyond this thought, he will say that all personal realisation is an error, because it is a becoming. Despite the apparent contradiction in terms, the same thing, twenty years off, is at stake. We are witnessing here the beginnings of a mode of thought, and later, a process thought out to the end. What, in fact, do words matter, if, from 1929 on, Krishnamurti has been saying that the way of knowledge is within each of us ?

The way towards this flowering of each of us is the consummation of the individual life which is the flower of universal life. To find it, we must be free of all influence, of all authority and of the wish to imitate. We must revolt, destroy whatever is imposed from outside, and create new values for ourselves, by ourselves, which shall be our only guide. These true values are to be found by a process of elimination. It is not a question of establishing them mentally or emotionally, but of living them. A physical action, a visible change in our life, must be the result. This change is not the consequence of renunciation or sacrifice. There can be no sacrifice when one is searching for one's own essence. For the man who understands, no sacrifice exists, only purification. And again, and always: In order to discover your true substance, you must be free from fear. First of all, from the fear of salvation, because no one is going to save you except yourself. No erection of churches, creation of gods or images, no prayers, no worship, no ceremonies, are going to give you that inward understanding and tranquility. Please, understand this ; I mean everything I say ; do not afterwards say : 'He does not quite mean that'. . . You must be free from ancient gods and modern gods. . . free from traditional right and wrong. . . If you want to change the world. . . you must be free from all fear of these things. . . free from the fear of punishment and the enticement of reward. . . free from fear of convention. . . free from the fear of loss and gain : financial, physical, emotional, mental. . . free from fear of life and death. . . free from the fear of loneliness or longing for companionship. . . For, if you are in love with Life, Life has no loneliness, has no companionship. IT IS. . . Free from the fear of uncertainty. . . you must doubt everything so that in your ecstasy of doubt you may become certain. Do not doubt when you are feeling tired. . . are unhappy; any one can! do that. You must doubt only in your moments of ecstasy, for then you will find out whether what remains is true or false. . . Free of love and hate. . . Free of the fear of not expressing yourself. . . Fear of desire, fear of ambition, jealousy, envy, competition, and the fear of pain and sorrow – you must be free of all that in order to discover what remains, which is eternal. (3)

Man, being free, is limited. In this conditioned state, it is only through direct intention that he can reacquire his liberty. Krishnamurti arouses this interest in us. Man is a prisoner, even if he is unable to recognise the fact, a prisoner of his own make up, a prisoner of his identification with psychological memory. In other words, he identifies himself with his bondage and employs every artifice to dam the inner creative flow, which would shatter it. These artifices are the temples where the man who has not discovered himself shelters his fears. And such a man is a prey to fear because the now, the boundless creative life, can expand only where he is not.

This is the inward destruction of the temples, which only confers real validity upon their outward demolition. Had Krishnamurti merely dissolved the Order of the Star, without uprooting the basic cause of the religious error, the dissolution would have been to no purpose. Had he not discovered the deep source of the human, which churches capture only to tarnish, new churches would have arisen on the ruins of the old. Had he not identified himself with just what men have always thought they were seeking in their religious and metaphysical myths (whereas, on the contrary, they were fleeing from it) ; had he not been the very embodiment of this eternally present truth, in the simplicity of a fully and uniquely human state ; had he not, by the consummation of his 'I', been the consummation of the divine (this being a creation of the 'I'); in other words, had he not been that human achievement which sub-men, in their sub-human state, have called God, he would merely have replaced old myths by new ones.

But no myth can legitimately be built on him. The awakening is total.

And when the individual dream has ceased – the dream, the only world in which God exists – when the awakening is there, only the human remains, the factual, things as they are, the real. The dream was a sensational drama. Reality, however complex, is simple. It is not a stirring of the emotions; The lover of sensations was the 'I'. The ego, with its imaginative fears was the inventor of passions, human and divine. Krishnamurti puts an end to the drama. Nor is this quite unexpected, either. The newness of his outlook is in its clearness. Wasn't the groping towards that awakening always there? Do we not find it again and again in countless forms, and especially in those men who have already acted upon it by virtue of their explosive influence? And have we not always, potentially, been this awakening ?

There are as many individual dreams as there are men, but the awakening is a common one. The symptoms of the awakened state are common to all.

A clarification is necessary here. It is a question of liberating the conception of time, within which the individual consciousness has petrified. The 'I' is linked indissolubly to the duration of time. For its life time, it considers itself permanent. Just as the character in a dream is made up of the substance of dream, the 'I' is made up of duration. It does not succeed in establishing between itself and time the same relationship as exists between itself and any object. This is the error from which the individual consciousness will never be able to free itself. The ego who attempts to achieve its freedom has the illusion of an eternity, as an endless duration of time, hence of the ego itself. This is obviously an absurd illusion, by which the ego contemplates its everlasting presence to itself, whereas to liberate oneself from duration is to consume one's being in a state of creative renewal.

The eternal now in which Krishnamurti lives, it is enough to live it, even if only for a fraction of a second, for one to be recreated thereby. This merging of the 'I' in the present, far from being a metaphysical eternity – that is to say, a permanence of the time-concept (and thanks to this illusion, the illusion of the permanence of the 'I'), is the opposite: time becomes again what it is, the obvious, matter of fact and necessary time of our clocks. However well we know that our universe is a time-space continuum, we must face the fact that in our individual consciousness and in our entire process of thought, time and space are separated into two different sets of perceptions. For our planet – and the system to which it belongs – a time measured by clocks and a space measured by rods exist in the frame of the law of relativity. They exist conveniently enough, and objectively. But time, as such, or space, as such, are unthinkable.

There is no such thing as 'duration' in time, just as 'infinity' in space is void of meaning. Philosophies have however been constructed around this unthinkable notion that the reality of time is its duration. We were asked to feel it within us, intimately, to live this vital current in an act of intuition. Now, if we examine this feeling in the light of the state of liberation which Krishnamurti teaches, we have to face the fact that duration is merely an association of individualised consciousness and objective time. This association is at every point similar to any other intimate association established by the 'I' with any object in a desire to be united with it. All ideas of duration are therefore nothing but the illusory idea of the permanence of a definite entity, supposed to exist independently of its relationship with the world. For Krishnamurti, on the contrary, there is no definite entity, except in the fossilised layers of memories, and therefore no duration, except in the recall of the dead past. The idea of duration can therefore only have its foundation in a sub-conscious state, the state of the 'I', and expresses the desire of the 'I' to achieve stability within its individual isolation. So the exponents of the idea of the reality of duration are merely exponents of the reality of the 'I'.

Besides, has not duration been affected by relativity? Who does not remember that hallucinatory illustration given by the popularizers : imagine we could travel fast enough: we should return in a few minutes to find the earth older by several years! What happens to the 'lapse of time' struck on our clocks? And what reality has our 'duration'?

Our reality? Yes, something in us, desire, consciousness, will always aspire towards the ineffable moment when duration is no more. . . yet something, the 'I', will, as long as it is there, oppose to this creative non-duration another desire, its own, the desire to last for ever.

This metaphysical error – this metaphysical craving of the 'I' – is a way of keeping oneself psychologically safe from many unpredictable and unpleasant challenges of life. He who finds peace in the absurd idea of eternity as duration may think he is seeking perfection. In reality, he is protecting his ego. The state he finds is not that of creativeness. Krishnamurti invites us into the fulness of a state which will on no account protect the 'I' and its works. In this fulness, consciousness has severed its association with time. Time no longer exists for man except as an instrument for carrying out his work which has become really creative. The eternity of the moment is no longer an escape of the ego within a social order found convenient, but an action transforming men and things.

It is an indescribable state, and certainly the opposite of what an eternity of duration would be. It is a state of creation, of action unconscious of self, permanent, total, impersonal. It is a human state. And it was with it that Krishnamurti destroyed the temples.
1930 – EXPERIENCE AND CONDUCT

The dramatic period is over. The lovers of miracles are routed. Some abandoned Krishnamurti, picking up the debris of their occult worlds, their 'spiritual hierarchies', their beliefs, their sects. It was but a retreat to prepared positions. They felt great changes coming in the world, and instead of seeing in Krishnamurti's outlook a way of surviving these shocks, they identified themselves with a fossilised tradition, with that which was doomed to destruction, and logically saw in Krishnamurti their destroyer.

Others still tried, without much conviction, to reconcile the irreconcilable, by bringing Krishnamurti, despite himself, back within the fold of their creeds. This was another safety measure. They wanted to eliminate the risk-element, by betting for and against at the same time ; this shew that they were really against. They soon tired of their efforts. There were also, finally, many who really tried to understand, and to find by themselves. The public began to be interested in this man who had refused to exploit the masses, although, too often, the same public approached him with its own preconceived ideas. The misunderstandings were still very serious. Some even thought it was a kind of palace revolution. People who really suffer in this world are rightly suspicious of the merchants of eternity. Let them fight amongst themselves! Idealism, whatever its forms, claims to draw its power from above. And that 'above' is called God, Brahman, Ideal, Being, Country, Righteousness, Humanity, etc. It is always transmitted to the crowd through a kind of hierarchy, that is to say, by the organisation of exploitation. Let the pontiffs quarrel amongst themselves about the way of exercising this power, all quarrels amount to the same in the end : how to break the process of man's liberation ? How to put down his revolt ? How to save the established order based on spiritual and material exploitation?

So far it had not been very clear that Krishnamurti was in fact in opposition to these merchants of eternity. Now he integrated spiritual values, but only in order to upset them. He seized the twin poles – of human thought, matter and spirit, and made of them a synthesis. But this synthesis was not zero, a neutralisation of more and less. It was positive. It was action. It had nothing to do with the false synthesis of the religious minded, who try to establish a brotherhood of religions and discover their 'common-truth'. Few men of good-will have escaped the fundamental error of seeking a universal religious gospel.

For Krishnamurti solved the problem at its roots. Religions are errors and a bundle of errors never makes truth. To the objection that, underlying these errors, there is an essential truth which is the common basis of all great religions, he replies that it is not necessary, in order to find this essential truth, to search for it where it has been distorted, and that life, which is the essential, can be found only through direct experience and in daily conduct. We cannot find what is essential through what is not, but by abandoning what is not. Not, therefore, through religions, but by abandoning them. What is not essential is useless, and what is useless, he says, is harmful.

The idea of co-operation and of fraternisation, among what too many people call the 'great human family', also belongs to the same order of error.

Krishnamurti preaches a total non-co-operation with the values of our so-called civilisation. For him, in fact, any co-operation with the established, within the existing framework, would be nothing but complicity in exploitation.

We cannot free ourselves of this complicity except by rooting up its causes in ourselves: the 'I' and its personal desires. It is therefore not a question of tracing the causes of this evil to others, but of rooting up our desire to submit. It is this desire which gives power to the exploiters, so that the latter exist by virtue of the exploited. There is, in fact, a mutual exploitation. By becoming fully conscious, we can root up this desire to dominate and be dominated. To become fully conscious is to suppress the cause of exploitation. But how can we, from the practical standpoint, liberate ourselves? Krishnamurti does not reply to this by offering a scheme of action, since according to him action must precede thought, and all ideas, whatever they be, are socially regressive, being based on the past. If we want a new world, we must have men who will know how to be new themselves.

From 1930 on, Krishnamurti rejects all ideological constructions and asks us to be simply and directly aware of our behaviour and conduct. Before examining however what he means by conduct, let us turn to other themes which may bring about misunderstandings: detachment and non-effort. To preach detachment as a means and non-effort as a goal can mean to spread the opium of evasion, of submission, of cowardice, etc. Here too, as with all that has a bearing on the destruction or non- destruction of the 'I', these words may be understood in a contradictory sense, and the sense that is given them by Krishnamurti, being the least common, is the one we think of last. By detachment is generally understood keeping away from people and things. Detachment in general consists in sheltering away from the world, its struggles, its passions, and in separating oneself from the seething daily life of humanity, in taking advantage of the solitude thus gained to escape into a metaphysical or religious dream. This detachment results in apparent non-effort because it is nothing but flight, a pretext one gives oneself for not going on lighting, a self-centered escape.

For Krishnamurti, detachment is not a segregation from a world for which we are all responsible and which does not exist except in our relations with it, but, on the contrary, a detached perception of ourselves, as a collection of elements of consciousness produced and conditioned by these relations. True detachment is the cessation of our desire to be that which we are not.

To detach ourselves from ourselves is to make complete our experience. Detachment is therefore an attachment to the reality of the world, to everything and everyone, and a detachment from whatever is conditioned by time-bound desires. This liberation is the core of Krishnamurti's teaching. In non-effort, from the background of fullness, man acts without motive and without cause. His impersonal action becomes creative. Effort resided in the conflict between the universal life of everyday, changing, unconditioned, and the attitude taken to it by man, leaning on the past, on his idiosyncrasies, on the illusion of his so-called absolute values, on his ego, his faculties, his desires, his possessions.

Every one, through traditions, through habit of thought, through custom, has established for himself a background, and from that background he tries to assimilate and judge new experiences. If you examine yourselves, you will find that you approach life from the point of view of a particular nationality, belief or class. You are all the time translating experiences in terms of the background which you have established. Now the purpose of experience is to discover the true value of all things. But if you are translating experience into terms of yesterday's experience, instead of helping you to grow, so that you become more and more inclusive, it is making you a slave. So do not seek to understand what I am going to say, from the point of view of your various backgrounds. Nor limit experience by terms of temperament. Temperaments are the result of separate individual existences. But that which knows no separation cannot be translated into terms of temperament; you cannot approach it through a particular temperament. If you look at it from the point of view of the part, then you do not see the whole, and naturally the whole appears in terms of the part, and you translate that part as temperament. Through a temperament you cannot perceive that which is beyond all temperaments, as from a background you cannot perceive that which is greater than all backgrounds.

Do not, however, confuse individual temperament with individual uniqueness; temperaments depend on birth, involving difference in environment, race consciousness, heredity, and so on. Individual uniqueness is continuous through birth and death, is the sole guide through your whole existence as a separate individual, until you reach the goal. In order to understand the meaning of individuality you must understand the purpose of individual existence. Life is creation, including the creator and the created, and Nature conceals life – that is, everything in manifestation conceals life in itself. When that life in Nature develops and becomes focussed in the individual, then Nature has fulfilled itself. The whole destiny and function of Nature is to create the individual who is self-conscious, who knows the pairs of opposite, who knows that he is an entity in himself, conscious and separate. So, life in Nature, through its development, becomes self-conscious in the awakened, concentrated individual. Nature's goal is man's individuality. The individual is a separate being who is self-conscious, who knows that he is different from another, in whom there is the separation of you and I. But individuality is imperfection, it is not an end in itself.

Evolution – in the sense of the extension of one's individuality through time – is a delusion. That which is imperfect, which is individuality, even though it is multiplied and increased, will always remain imperfect. Individuality is intensified through the conflict of ignorance, and the limitation of thought and emotion. In that there is self-conscious separateness. Now, it is vain to increase self-consciousness, which is separateness to the nth degree ; it will remain separate because it has its roots in separation. Therefore, the magnifying of that I am, which is separateness cannot be inclusive. The evolution if I am is but an expansion of that separateness in space and time. The individual held in the bondage of limitation, knowing the separation of you and I, has to liberate himself and has to fulfil himself in that liberation. Liberation is freedom of consciousness, which is not the multiplication of I am, but results from the wearing down of the sense of separateness. The ultimate purpose of individual existence is to realise pure being in which there is no separation, which is the realisation of the whole. The fulfilment of man's destiny is to be the totality. It is not a question of losing yourself in the Absolute, but that you, by growth, by continual conflict, by adjustment, shall become the whole. Individuality is merely a segment of the totality, and it is because it feels itself to be only a part that it is all the time seeking to fulfill itself, to realise itself in the totality. Therefore self-consciousness involves effort. If you do not make an effort against limitation, there is no longer self-consciousness and individuality. When individuality has fulfilled itself through ceaseless effort, destroying, tearing down the wall of separateness, when it has achieved a sense of effortless being, then individual existence has fulfilled itself.

First you must know towards what this individual life – this existence in which is the beginning and the end – is making its way. You must realise the purpose of existence; otherwise experience has no meaning, creation has no meaning, uniqueness has no meaning. If the individual in whom there is the consciousness of separation, of subject and object, does not understand the purpose of existence, he merely becomes a slave to experience, to the creation of forms. But if you understand the purpose of existence, then you will utilise every experience, every emotion, every thought, to strengthen you to wear down this wall of separation . (15)

Krishnamurti is not therefore a philosopher in the sense given to that word. We must approach his point of view like people who are ignorant but who successively realise, as though in spite of themselves, not various systems of philosophy, but the various states of consciousness from which these emerge one after another. This method, unusual as it is, is nevertheless the only one which remains to those of us who think that intellect, having completed the circle around itself, need not repeat the round. Has not this circle already integrated the imponderable by postulating, in modern physics, that the laws of the mind are also the laws of nature ? The aspiration towards subjective infinity seemed to have found a way to self-fulfilment by insisting that the world-process had given it birth. But though this fusion of subject and object within the same process succeeded in breaking down the opposition between thought and sensory existence, it was an opportunity for the former to infer from that identity the reality of its metaphysical life. The factual, situated and living in the self, became Being, in its own concept. The 'I', born of a material process, claimed that it had dominated it instead of acknowledging that it had to submit to its laws. At the opposite pole to these idealistic twistings and turnings, other philosophers, appalled at the idea of not being materialistic enough, tried to make the subject vanish into thin air without leaving any traces. These two distortions, the idealistic and materialistic, indicate clearly enough that the process has not been carried through to the end by these philosophers. If the union of subject and object had really been achieved by them, they would not ask us to choose between the annihilation of the object, projected by the being, or the annihilation of the being, projected by the object, between spirit and matter. This is the dilemma we must outgrow, together with this way of putting it, that is, the philosophies. The reade! r of philosophical literature quickly discovers one or the other of these two systems (with all the shades they undoubtedly have), which means, in practice, that this literature is not worth much as far as real synthesis is concerned.

To outgrow the dilemma is to have lived it down. Krishnamurti’s point of view is not a critical attitude assumed with regard to these philosophies (which, in any case, he professed not to know), but an awareness, a state constantly lived. In the light of this state, it is clear to him that natural evolution has reached a certain stage with the formation of self-consciousness, and that this stage must lead to a new state where he, Krishnamurti, already is, and which is the fruit of individual consciousness and its experiences.

It is more important to bring men to this new stage than to discuss the stage. It is more important to change men and the world, than to look for explanations of the universe. Krishnamurti never allows himself to be drawn into speculations. A few indications he gives as to this state of timeless love have a precise ring about them and must suffice. These indications will help us provided we do not try to intellectualise them too much or develop them into philosophies. Besides, if we try to take them over with the vocabulary used by Krishnamurti in 1950, they will prove deceiving. They are impracticable at the point reached in 1930. The self of which he speaks, in which is immortality, which is life in us, no longer corresponds at all to the metaphysical eternalisation of the subjective. But there is an idea of permanence contained in this word, which is meant to include what was the subject, and what was the object also, although neither of these are there as such. Though it is true that all we have to do to give this synthesis a name, is to re-christen any word we chose to use, the word 'self', owing to the idea of duration which it cannot help implying, is peculiarly unsuitable for expressing immortality which eludes duration, and, as such, is unthinkable. What we seek here will be, as ever, some kind of practical indication, and not the elements of a philosophic system which Krishnamurti himself would contradict in the course of his various utterances.

To the self-conscious individual there is subject and object, and he objectifies a far-off Entity to whom he looks for aid, to whom he gives out his adoration, his love, his whole being. But the end of existence, the fulfilment of the individual, is to realise in himself the totality – without object or subject – which is pure life. So it is in the subjectivity of the individual that the object really exists. In the individual is the beginning and the end. In him is the totality of all experience, all thought, all emotion. In him is all potentiality, and his task is to realise that objectivity in the subjective.

Now, if what I mean by individuality is not properly understood, people are apt to make the mistake of assuming it to be selfish, ruthless anarchism, and that is why I am careful to explain that in man lies the entirety of progress. In himself lies the beginning and the end, the source and the goal. In creating a bridge from that source to the end is the fulfilment of man. The individual is the focus of the universe. So long as you do not understand yourself, so long as you do not fathom the fulness of yourself, you can be dominated, controlled, caught up in the wheel of continual strife. So you must concern yourself with the individual, that is with yourself, in whom all others exist. That is why I am only concerned with the individual. In the present civilisation, however, collectivity is striving to dominate the individual, irrespective of his growth, but it is the individual that matters, because if the individual is clear in his purpose, is assured, certain, then his struggle with society will cease. Then the individual will not be dominated by the morality, the narrowness, the conventions and experiments of societies and groups. The individual is the whole universe, the individual is the whole world, not a separate part of the world. The individual is the all-inclusive, not the all-exclusive. . .

To be rid of fear is to realise that in you is the focal centre of life's expression. When you have such a view, you are the creator of opportunities; you no longer avoid temptations, you transcend them ; you no longer wish to imitate and become a machine or a type, which is but the desire to conform to a background. You use tradition to weigh, and thereby transcend, all tradition.

Life is not working to produce a type, life is not creating graven images. Life makes you entirely different one from the other, and in diversity must your fulfilment be, not in the production of a type. Look what is happening at present. You worship the many in the one, you worship the whole of life personified in one being. This is to worship a type, a waxen image, and thereby you mould yourself into this type, into this image ; and in such imitation is the bondage of sorrow. . .

If you create a type and merely adjust the balance between yourself and that type, it is not an adjustment to life, it is purely a personal whim. But if you establish harmony between yourself and the one in the many, then you are not creating an image, nor a type, but rather you are becoming life itself. This is the difference between creation and imitation. . .(15)

Our task is to apprehend and to realise the totality.

From this realisation comes the certainty of individual purpose, the aim of individual existence, which is to be united with the totality in which there is no separation, no subject and object. Naturally, life, the totality, the summation of all life, has no purpose. It is. That life is of no particular temperament or kind; it is impersonal. But between that life and the understanding of it by the individual lies individual existence, this scar of suffering. The purpose of individual existence is to wear down this individuality, this ego of reaction, by recollectedness, by constant awareness, by concentration in all that you are doing with this purpose ever in mind. Then action is spontaneous; it is your own, desire which is constantly urging you more and more to purify your conduct, as the result of purity of emotion and thought. Conduct is the outcome of a clear understanding of the purpose of individual existence. If conduct is born out of purity of emotion and thought, out of understanding, such action will not entangle, will not act as a cage but as an instrument for realisation. . .

Conduct is the way of life, the way to that supreme, serene reality which every one must realise. Through discernment you will come nearer and nearer to the source of things, so that you, as an individual, will be living this reality. When once you have grasped that central reality, that fundamental principle of being, when you have criticised, analysed and examined it impersonally, and are living it – even partially – then through your own effort you are illuminating the darkness which surrounds the life of every human being, the darkness which I call the unessential.

Now, to find out for oneself what is the essential and what the unessential, one must have the understanding vision of the ultimate purpose of individual existence. From that you can always judge for yourself what is the unessential and what the essential. Whenever there is no inward resistance towards an unessential thing, that lack of resistance may be called evil. There cannot be a strict demarcation of evil and good, since good is but the capacity to resist the unessential. You discover the essential by a process of continual choice based on the understanding of the true purpose of existence. Choice is the continual discovery of truth. Choice means action, which is conduct, the manner of your behaviour. All conduct must ultimately lead towards pure being, so that we must concern ourselves not only with that ultimate reality but with the practical way of translating that reality into conduct. Everyone wants to be practical, to understand life practically. The liberated man is the most practical man in the world, because he has discovered the true value of all things. That discovery is illumination.

Life is conduct, the manner of our behaviour towards another, which is our action. When that behaviour becomes pure, then it is unimpeded life in action. Life, that reality which I have been trying to describe, is balance, and this can only be gained through the conflicting forces of manifestation. Manifestation is action. To arrive at that perfect balance which, to me, is pure being, pure life, one cannot withdraw from this world of manifestation ; one cannot, out of the weariness of conflict seek that balance away from the world. Liberation is to be found in the world of manifestation, and not away from it; liberation is into manifestation rather than out of it. When you are free in the sense of knowing the true value of manifestation, then you are free of manifestation. It is in this world that you must find balance. All things about us are real. Everything is real, and not an illusion. But each one has to find the essential, the real in all that is about him – that is, each one has to discern the unreality which surrounds the real. The real is true worth. Directly you discern what is the unreal, reality is beginning to assert itself. Through choice of action, you discover the true value of all things. Through experience, ignorance is dissipated – ignorance being the admixture of the essential and the unessential. Out of the unessential is born delusion. In order to discover what is the essential, one must look at desire. Desire is all the time trying to free itself from delusion. So desire goes through various stages of experience in search of this balance, and can either become a cage or an open door, a prison house or an open way to liberation. One must therefore understand this fundamental desire within oneself – control it, not repress it. Repression is not control. Control is the domination through understanding, self-discipline through the understanding of what life is, of the purpose of individual existence.

When you, as an individual, have discovered for yourself the true basis of conduct, you will establish order about you, that true understanding which will break down the barriers between yourself and others. That is why my emphasis is on conduct. True conduct is self-realised conduct, not based on any complicated philosophy but on one's own experience. True conduct is the translation of one's realisation into activity. In this there is no longer an attempt to become, there is always the attempt to be – the striving after being, not becoming. When you realise through experience, through continual examination, observation, impersonal analysis, that life is one, that you are part of that all-inclusive life, then you have removed the fundamental cause of fear. . .

As I said before, individuality is not an end in itself, it is in the process of becoming until it arrives at being. Becoming is effort, being is the cessation of effort. Whenever there is effort it is self-conscious and hence it is imperfect. Being is pure awareness, effortless consciousness. . .

To arrive at that being, one must watch over desire caused by self-conscious existence. When you understand desire, from whence it springs and towards what it is going, its aim and purpose, desire becomes a precious jewel to which you cling, which you are continually chiselling and refining. Then that desire is not an imposed discipline, but becomes true discipline, which varies progressively until you arrive at pure being. Desire is its own discipline.

You can only find out whether you are laying your emphasis on the essential or the unessential, by putting into practice what little you have understood of reality. In putting that understanding into practice, you will soon find out how much desire there is in you to conquer the whole. In olden days, those who desired to find truth relinquished the whole world and withdrew to a monastic or ascetic life. If I were to form a narrow, exclusive body of ascetics, you would perhaps join it – but that would be merely a superficial acknowledgment of what you want to realise. The effort to realise must come where you are, within yourself, surrounded by all manner of confusions, contradictory ideas, and what you would call temptations. (From my point of view there is no such thing as temptation). Throwing off one dress and adopting another is not going to strengthen you in your desire. What strengthens you is desire itself. In watching, in guiding that desire, in being self-recollected in your conduct, in your thought, in your movements, in your behaviour, in adjusting yourself to that which you realise to be the purpose of individual existence, you have the positive test of self-realisation – not in belonging to sects, societies, groups and orders. Then you utilise experience; you do not become its slave. Therefore pure conduct demands purity of thought. By purity I mean the purity brought about by reason, not through the sentimentality of belief. Reason is the essence if your experience – or of the experience of another examined impersonally, without the desire for comfort or authority – which you have analysed and criticised with detachment. This is the only way to test values in life. . .

In the fulfilment of your individuality is the totality of life. (15)

This way of testing truth in everyday life is simple and efficient. Too simple and too realistic for certain philosophers. Truth is the outcome of our watchfulness in our daily life of the person we think we are. It is the way we act on what we think we have understood. Being a process, and not a fixed point, we can enter into that awareness (or rather give birth to it) as soon as we really wish to do so. The smallest real action in our daily life is more efficient than a philosophy, for it helps us to enter into the creative process of nature, and arouses it, in its turn, in us. It is a kind of self-fertilization. True action is that which emanates from the desire in us, which we believe, without deceiving ourselves, to be more profound, more vital than all others. To uncover our most secret desire, to seize on it, allow ourselves to be led by it towards the understanding of its real purpose, is the beginning of wisdom, provided that we are not playing with it. In this process, we have to face morality, our ideas of good and evil, our prejudices as to what is virtuous and shameful, sublime and low. We have to discover their real meaning as escapes. Contemporary psychology is aware of this. It knows it, and yet does not even try to throw a light on man's tenacious faculty of opening up new ways of escape at every moment. Far, in fact, from keeping a purely scientific point of view, psychology is constantly rebuilding the 'I' in one form or another, exalted or sublime, which, on moral foundations, finally establishes values and ideas of the same type as those which it claims to correct.

It will readily be seen that Krishnamurti bursts the framework of psycho-analysis as well as of philosophy. Thus he integrates them, by discarding them, for all that one persists in seeing from the point of view of the reality of the 'I' is a complete reversal of truth. Introspection, in a general way, consists in attempting to find out the causes of a disturbance which has occurred in the 'I', causes which, once brought to the so-called conscious surface, disappear and allow the 'I' to reconstitute itself peacefully in its pseudo-reality. An 'l' which is thus self-contained again in its own explanation of itself is called cured. It does not occur to psychologists that the most useful work they could do would be to shatter the 'I' altogether for its greater good and for the good of all, instead of 'adapting' it to a world of false values.

Reconstituting the 'I', introspection ends in a set of morals which destroy creative genius. Each man on earth can develop this creative genius by liberating himself from his 'I', or smother it by shutting himself in, whereas the normal man, according to the psychologists, is the man who, having adapted himself to the world in which he lives, becomes a mediocrity. This morality automatically becomes a contributing factor in the present disorder called the established order.

Apart from this all, the analyst himself does not disintegrate his own 'I' and thus remains an element of social regression.

His 'consciousness' is a state belonging to the 'I' and therefore a human one in process of formation. The 'I', being a construction built on an inner contradiction, must necessarily divide consciousness in two, the conscious and the unconscious. These two states are not essentially different from one another. If we wished to invent a terminology, we should say that taken together these two states are the 'pre-conscious?

In this state, to bring back to one pole, the concious, what belongs to the other, is of relative value only. Attentive examination of this method reveals its danger. Only the integration of both layers can, in fact, allow us to understand the 'I'. The nearer truth is approximate knowledge, the more it lends itself to the specific aims of the 'I'. It allows the latter to identify itself with anything it likes. The 'I', which is only a coagulation of a part of consciousness, identifies itself with the whole. It is always the superficial layer which explores and explains the rest. The more, through psychoanalysis, it explains itself, the more it justifies itself. The deeper layers of our consciousness, which are the very roots of ourselves, are supposed to be blind and dumb. Therefore, any exchange between the superficial and the profound is seized upon, possessively, by the 'I', which is the thinker, and reinforces its illusion. Psycho-analysis becomes a weapon in the defensive mechanism of the 'I', and it is no doubt for this reason that it has so rapidly been taken out of the hospitals to become generalised, transformed into ethics etc. The 'I's, greedy to endure and to consolidate their works by every possible means, are only too happy to seize this new weapon which is offered them.

Krishnamurti’s criticism of the psycho-analytical method, which people would like to generalise as a method of self-knowledge, is that it constantly takes the individual back into his past, then back again into the present, with a harvest of disturbing facts, which are re-lived both emotionally and intellectually and explained away in their primitive shapes. Bringing the past into the present is of no value for true insight, which leads to the destruction of the self. When the 'I', which is the past, dives into the past, it only gets stronger. The ego creates for himself the illusion of being a permanent entity which carried in itself an obstacle to its own peaceful life. Having re-lived the blockage, the ego is supposed to live happily ever after in the contemplation of its own capacity of being a super-ego explaining, justifying and dominating a lower ego. Krishnamurti does not believe in the virtue of such self-gratification. Self-domination is always meant for the purpose of keeping one's balance.

The beginning of real action, on the contrary, is to submit to the challenge of the present the scaffolding of balances one has built up so far, so that it may be disintegrated by clear-perception of all it is really made of.

For many people, analytical escape takes the place of religious escape. Krishnamurti discards it, as he does religions, not by opposing but by integrating. Psychological analysis, becoming a religion, reverses truth by using it for the benefit of the 'I' and its regressions. Here again, as with philosophy, we can see the truth of Krishnamurti's approach by comparing it with the psychological distortions born from insistence on the validity of the ego.

Truth is simpler and more immediate than these pseudo sciences. The present is ever before us, in daily events, in men and things. As soon as we stop setting against it the past, that is to say the 'I', its traditions, its knowledge, its systems, its methods, its countless desires, truth is there. The human outdistances and integrates all sub-human probings, all sub-truths, philosophies, psychologies, religions, all the mental rubbish amassed by men who cling to some kind or other of continuity in time.

To reach this truth, the smallest gesture which one makes, with the impersonal and lucid understanding of its full meaning, is worth more than all the knowledges accumulated in past ages.
THE CREATIVE STATE

The criticism Krishnamurti makes of analytical methods brings on him questions which can be summed up in the following: Are you merely teaching a more subtle form of psychology? And here is his reply:

What do we mean by psychology? Do we not mean the study of the human mind, of oneself ? If we do not understand our own make up, our own psyche, our own thought-feeling, then how can we understand anything else? How can you know that what you think is true if you have no knowledge of yourself ? If you do not know yourself, you will not know reality. Psychology is not an end in itself. It is but a beginning. In the study of oneself, right foundation is laid for the structure of reality. You must have the foundation but it is not an end in itself, it is not the structure. If you have not laid the right foundation, ignorance, illusion, superstition will come into being, as they exist in the world today. You must lay the right foundation with right means. You cannot have the right with wrong means. The study of oneself is an extremely difficult task and without self-knowledge and right thinking ultimate reality is not comprehensible. If you are not aware of and so do not understand the self-contradiction, they confusion and the different layers of consciousness, then on what are you to build? Without self-knowledge that which you build, your formulations, beliefs, hopes will have little significance.

To understand oneself requires a great deal of detachment and subtlety, perseverance and penetration; not dogmatism, not assertion, not denial, not comparison, which lead to dualism and confusion. You must be your own psychologist, you must be aware of yourself, for out of yourself is all knowledge and wisdom. Nobody can be an expert about you. You have to discover for yourself and so liberate yourself ; not another can help you in freeing yourself from ignorance and sorrow. You create your own sorrow and there is no saviour but yourself. (17)

Thus psychology is not an end but a beginning. The end is the integration of man in his totality, psychical and physical, the consummation of his energy in the present, which brings us, obviously, to the question of sex. It will however be useful to return first of all to this 'present', to this 'timelessness', as seen by psychology. In 1949 at Benares, in the fullness of his maturity, Krishnamurti took up again his criticism of analysis, and conducted us to the very threshold at which becoming is transfigured into being.

QUESTION: Can the past dissolve all at once, or does it invariably need time?

KRISHNAMURTI: We are the result of the past. Our thought is founded upon yesterday, and many thousand yesterdays. We are the result of time, and our responses, our present attitudes, are the cumulative effect of many thousand moments, incidents and experiences. So the past is, for the majority of us, the present, which is a fact, which cannot be denied. You, your thought, your actions, your responses, are the result of the past. Now the questioner wants to know if that past can be wiped out immediately, which means not in time, but immediately, wiped out; or does this cumulative past require time for the mind to be freed in the present? It is important to understand the question. That is, as each one of us is the result of the past, with a background of innumerable influences, constantly changing, is it possible to wipe out that background without going through the process of time? Is that clear? The question is clear, surely.

Now, what is the past? What do we mean by the past? Surely we do not mean the chronological past, the second that was before, we don't mean that, that is just over. We mean, surely, the accumulated experiences, the accumulated responses, memories, traditions, knowledge, the sub-conscious store-house of innumerable thoughts, feelings, influences and responses. With that background, it is not possible to understand reality, because reality must be of no time: it is timeless. So, one cannot understand the timeless with a mind which is the outcome of time. The questioner wants to know if it is possible to free the mind, or for the mind, which is the result of time, to cease to be, immediately ; or must one go through a long series of examinations and analyses, and so free the mind from its background. You see the difficulty in the question.

Now, the mind is the background; the mind is the result of time; the mind is the past, the mind is not the future. It can project itself into the future; and the mind uses the present as a passage to the future, so it is still – whatever it does, whatever its activity, its future activity, its present activity, its past activity – in the net of time. And is it possible for the mind to cease completely, which means, for the thought process to come to an end? Now, there are obviously many layers to the mind; what we call consciousness, has many layers, each layer interrelated with the other layer, each layer dependent on the other, interacting; and our whole consciousness is not only experiencing, but also naming or terming, and also storing up as memory. That is the whole process of consciousness, is it not? Or is this all too difficult?

When we talk about consciousness, do we not mean the experiencing, the naming or the terming of that experience, and thereby storing up that experience in memory? Surely, all this, at different levels, is consciousness. And, can the mind, which is the result of time, go through the process of analysis, step by step, in order to free itself from the background; or is it possible to be free entirely from time and look at reality directly?

Now, let us see. Are you interested in this? Because you know, this is really quite an important question; because it is possible, as I will presently explain, to be free of the background, therefore to renew life immediately, without dependence on time; to recreate ourselves immediately and not depend on time. If you are interested, I will proceed, and you will see.

To be free of the background, many of the analysts say that you must examine every response, every complex, every hindrance, every blockage, which implies a process of time, obviously which means the analyser must understand what he is analysing; and he must not misinterpret what he analyses. Because, if he mistranslates what he analyses, it will lead him to wrong conclusions, and therefore establish another background. Do you follow? Therefore the analyser must be capable of analysing his thoughts, feelings, without the slightest deviation; and he must not miss one step in his analysis, because to take a wrong step, to draw a wrong conclusion, is to re-establish a background along a different line, on a different level. And this problem also arises: Is the analyser different from what he analyses? Are not the analyser and the thing that is analysed a joint phenomenon? Sir, I am not sure you are interested in this, but I will I go on.

Surely the experiencer and the experience are a joint phenomenon, they are not two separate processes. So, first of all, let us see the difficulty of analysing. It is almost impossible to analyse the whole content of our consciousness, and thereby be free through that process. Because, after all, who is the analyser? The analyser is not different, though he may think he is different, from that which he is analysing. He may separate himself from that which he analyses, but the analyser is part of that which he analyses. I have a thought, I have a feeling, say, for example, I am angry. The person who analyses anger is still part of anger; and therefore the analyser as well as the analysed are a joint phenomenon, they are not two separate forces or processes; and so the difficulty of analysing ourselves, unfolding, looking at ourselves page after page watching every reaction, every response, is incalculably difficult and long. Surely? Therefore, that is not the way to free ourselves from the background. Is it? So there must be a much simpler, a more direct way; and that is what you and I are going to find out. But to find out we must discard that which is false, and not hold on to it. So analysis is not the way, and we must be free of the process of analysis. As you would not take as path which you know does not lead anywhere, similarly the process of analysis will not lead anywhere, therefore, you do not take that path ; therefore, it is out of your system.

Then what have you left? You are only used to analysis, are you not? The observer observing – the observer and the observed being a joint phenomenon – the observer trying to analyse that which he observes, will not free him from his background. If that is so, and it is, you abandon that process, do you not? I do not know if you follow all this. If you see that it is a false way, if you realize, not merely verbally but actually, that it is a false process, then what happens to your analysis? You stop analysing, do you not? Then what have you left? Watch it, Sir, follow it, if you will kindly, and you will see how rapidly and swiftly one can be free from the background. If that is not the way, what else have you left? What is the state of the mind which is accustomed to analysis, to proving, looking into, discussing, drawing conclusions, and so on? If that process has stopped, what is the state of your mind?

You say that the mind is blank. Now, proceed further into that blank mind; in other words, when you discard what is known as being false, what has happened to your mind? After all, what have you discarded? You have discarded the false process which is the outcome of a background. Is that not so? With one blow, as it were, you have discarded the whole thing. Therefore your mind, when you discard the analytical process with all its implications and see it as false, is freed from yesterday, and therefore is capable of looking directly, without going through the process of time, and thereby discarding the background immediately.

Sir, to put the whole question differently, thought is the result of time. Is it not? Thought is the result of environment, of social and religious influences, which is all part of time. Now, can thought be free of time? That is, thought which is the result of time, can it stop and be free from the process of time? Thought can be controlled, shaped; but the control of thought is still within the field of time, and so our difficulty is: how can a mind that is the result of time, of many thousand yesterdays, be instantaneously free of this complex background? And you can be free of it, not tomorrow, but in the present, in the now. That can be done only when you realize that which is false; and the false is obviously the analytical process, and that is the only thing we have; and when the analytical process completely stops, not through enforcement, but through understanding the inevitable falseness of that process, then you will find that your mind is completely dissociated from the past – which does not mean that you do not recognize the past, but your mind has no direct communion with the past. So it can free itself from the past immediately, now; and this dissociation from the past, this complete freedom from yesterday, psychologically, not chronologically but psychologically, is possible and that is the only way to understand reality.

Now, to put it very simply, when you want to understand something, what is the state of your mind? When you want to understand your child, when you want to understand somebody, something that someone is saying, what is the state of your mind? You are not analysing, criticizing, judging what the other is saying; you are listening, are you not? Your mind is in a state where the thought process is not active, but is very alert. Yes? And that alertness is not of time, is it? You are merely being alert, passively receptive, and yet fully aware; and it is only in this state that there is understanding. Surely, when the mind is agitated, questioning, worrying, dissecting, analysing, there is no understanding. And when there is the intensity to understand, the mind is obviously tranquil. This, of course you have to experiment with, not take my word for it. But you can see that the more and more you analyse, the less and less you understand. You may understand certain events, certain experiences; but the whole content of consciousness cannot be emptied through the analytical process. It can be emptied only when you see the falseness of the approach through analysis. When you see the false as the false, then you begin to see what is true; and it is truth that is going to liberate you from the background. To receive that truth, the mind must cease to be analytical, must not be caught in the thought process, which obviously is analysis. (19)

That strenuous process of emptying our mind is a concentration of energy, which releases our creative faculties, and it is only thus that we can finally examine the question of sex.

Here is a text of 1931 :

The realisation of Truth is the consummation of energy. To reach that consummation, energy must be concentrated in deep contemptation which is the natural result of action, the right judgment of values. I lead what you may call an ascetic life because of this concentration of energy, which is the freedom of self-consciousness. I am not saying that you should imitate me. I do not say that you cannot realise this contemplation because you are married. But a man who desires the realisation of completeness wholly, permanently, must have all his energy concentrated.

A man who is a slave to passion, to lust, sensations, cannot realise this. I am not saying that you should lead an ascetic life, go away into the forest or away from the world. Through the avoidance of the world you cannot attain Truth, nor through indulgence.

Through the harmony of your reason and your love, you come to the concentration of that energy which now you dissipate through passions, envies and sensations. Completeness lies in realising that harmony.

Do not make what you call the ascetic life – which you attribute to me – the highest purpose. That is a very small detail. True asceticism is not the deification of primitivism. By becoming primitive, by suppressing, you may think that you are going to realise Truth. The true ascetic is detached in whatever circumstances he may find himself. But to be a true ascetic you must be very honest; otherwise you can deceive yourself hopelessly, as many do. You need the integrity of thought and the clarity of purpose which will lead you to a life of utter detachment – not of indifference, but detachment with affection, with enthusiasm. If you give your thought, your life, your reason, your whole substance to it, you will understand. Do not deify me as an ascetic and worship asceticism. Asceticism generally comes from the desire to escape, from the fear of experience. But a man must be absolutely detached, with comprehension. To me, there is no renunciation. Where there is no understanding, there is renunciation. If you are really detached, which needs comprehension of the right value of experience, then you are free inwardly and outwardly; outwardly as far as you can, but inwardly assuredly. (6)

Krishnamurti is well knows the creative alchemy of the human body. When the body is mature, it must choose between submitting itself to its creative genius, and submitting it to its whims. But asceticism, mortification of the flesh, is certainly only the way to repression. Here, as always, Krishnamurti’s method is simple and direct. Concentration in the present cannot but lead to the harmonisation of intelligence and love, and that creative power absorbs, by transforming it, the substance of being. The wish to reach this state of completeness by conforming to external symbols, is absurd.

What is of importance is not the manner, the system the method, but that completeness which man must realise. As soon as that consummation of the freedom of self-consciousness becomes your only desire, that desire makes its own law. Your desire becomes your discipline. So do not lay emphasis on the method, on marriage or non-marriage, having children or not having children. Those are incidents, out of which you have to gather understanding ; but it is the understanding which is of the utmost, final importance. . .

A man who has realised through his suffering, through his conflicts, through his self-recollectedness, that inward ecstasy of solitude ; who does not depend for his happiness on external things ; who is liberated from his self-consciousness – such a man may be an ascetic or may be married. He can live in the world and yet be not of it. But to realise this, you must be wholly free of secret desires and be liberated from the delusion of individuality, which engenders subtle deceptions. . .

As long as man holds to his self-consciousness there is a struggle between the opposites, like and dislike, attraction and repulsion. A man who desires to be free of self-consciousness must be normal, he must not suppress any of his desires through fear, but must understand his conflict, his love, his sex. This understanding shall make him free from self-consciousness. (7)

As we see, Krishnamurti constantly insists on the one point which interests him, and which he considers to be of primary importance: man must free himself from the 'I'. He who has freed himself is no longer at the mercy of his sexual instincts, he has mastered his body. The energy which he dissipated in passion, in envy, in sensation, is now concentrated into understanding of the true value of things. To be dominated by passions, by sexual desire, is to feel a void in oneself, an incompleteness and therefore to vainly pursue anything which is supposed to bring about fulfilment.

Coming back to this question (at Madras in 1947) Krishnamurti explained it in the general framework of the individual and society in relationship with the past, which we always tend to repeat, and the present, which alone is creative.

QUESTION: I am very seriously disturbed by the sex urge. How am I to overcome it ?

KRISHNAMURTI: Sirs, this is an enormous problem. The implications are extraordinarily profound and wide. There are many, many things involved in this question, not merely sex, which is only of secondary importance. So, please bear with me if I do not tell you how to overcome the sex urge; but we are going to study the problem together, to see what is involved and as we study the problem, you will find the right answer for yourself. First, let us understand the problem of overcoming. How am I to overcome anger, jealousy? What happens when you overcome an enemy? It is always possible to overcome him. I may overcome you because I am stronger, but you may be stronger presently and you will overcome me. So, it is a game of constantly overcoming. That which can be overcome has to be overcome or conquered over and over again. Please see the significance of that simple statement. Whereas, if you understand something, it is over. Take the wars that have been going on in Europe, the overcoming of one country by another; they have been doing that for the past two thousand years all over the world. But, if they had said let us sit down and understand and not fight and kill each other surely there would have been an understanding of peace.

So, there is overcoming but understanding is much more difficult than conquering, than controlling, because understanding requires thought, wise observation, examination and tentative approach, which means intelligence. A stupid man can always overcome something. The advice that you must strive and overcome is a real folly, which does not mean that you must give in, indulge, which is the opposite and therefore equally foolish.

So, if there is a problem, as the questioner has, of sex, we must understand it and not merely ask: how can it be overcome? That which has been overcome has to be conquered and reconquered again and again. Have you ever conquered? Did you not have to repeat it over and over again because it reappeared in ten other ways? So, surely that is not the way to understand the problem. Where there is a justification of overcoming, where there is condemnation or identification, surely there can be no understanding. You will have understanding only when you consider the problem, when you accept it, look at it, become aware of its significance completely, and even love it. Then it will yield you its significance. Then, in it there is creativeness.

Because all our pleasures are mechanical, sex has become the only pleasure which is creative. Religion has become mechanical. Authority has bound us mentally and emotionally and therefore you are blinded and blocked there. There is no creativeness in thinking about God. Is there? You do not find joy in thinking about God? It gives you emotional satisfaction. One has to be happy and joyous, which is surely the highest form of religion. But merely following authority, tradition, going to the temple, repeating mantrams, attending to the priests, surely that is not religion. That is mere repetition and what happens if you repeat? Your mind becomes dull, there is no joy in it. So emotionally and intellectually we are starved. We are merely repeating. This is a fact. I am not saying something extraordinary. Emotionally we are machines carrying out a routine and the machine is not creative. A man may have habits but thereby he is not creative. He may recite mantrams, practise japams and all the rest of that nonsense, but he is not creative. Such a repetitive man has merely destroyed his clarity, the power to think, the power to perceive, to understand.

See what society has done to us – our education, our routine of business, the gathering of money, the performing of awful duties and so on. In all this, is there a sense of joy? There is only perfect boredom. So, as we are hedged all-round by uncreative thinking, there is only one thing left to us, and that is sex. As sex is the only thing that is left it becomes an enormous problem, whereas if we understood what it means to be creative religiously and emotionally, to be creative at all moments, when you love, when you cry; when you are aware of that directly, surely then sex would become an insignificant problem.

But you sec the difficulties. Passion or the biological urge is so strong, that religious societies through their tradition and laws have held you in restraint, but now that tradition and laws have little significance, you merely indulge in it.

Another enormous thing which we have lost through this struggle and through this regimentation, is love. Sirs, love is chaste and without love merely to overcome or indulge in sex has no meaning. Without love, we have become what we are today, mere machines. If we look at our faces in the mirror we can see how unformed they are, how immature we are. We have produced children without love. Often we are emotionally driven without love and what kind of civilization do you expect to produce in that way? I know the religious books say that you must become a Brahmachari to find God. Do you mean to say that you can find God without love? Brahmacharya is merely an idea, an ideal to be achieved. Surely that which you achieve through will, through condemnation, through conclusion will not lead you to reality, to God. What shows us the way to reality, to God, is understanding and not suppression, not substitution. To give up sex for the love of God, is only substitution, only sublimation, it is not understanding. So, if there is love there is chastity; but to become chaste is to become ugly, vicious and immature.

So, look at our lives and see what we have done. We do not know how to love. Our life is merely an aspiring for position, for the continuance of ourselves through our families, through our sons and so on, But without love what is our life? Surely, mere suppression of passion does not solve anything, neither the brutal sex passion, not the passion to become something. Surely they are both the same. You may suppress sex, but if you are ambitious to be something it is the same urge in another direction. It is equally brutal, equally vicious, equally ugly. But a man who has real love in his heart has no sorrow and to him sex is not a problem. But since we have lost love, sex has become a great problem and a difficult one because we are caught in it, by habit, by imagination and by yesterday's memory which threatens us and holds us. And why are we held by yesterday's memory? Again, because we are not creative human beings. Creation is constant renewal. That which was yesterday will never be again. There can only be today; not memory to which you give life. Memory is not creation, memory is not life. Memory does not give understanding, yet we hold on to it, to all the excitements of sex through memory. That gives us an extraordinary exhilaration, for that is the only thing we have. We are starved, empty; and the thing we think of is to repeat, to recollect. What happens to a thing that is repeated over and over again? It becomes mechanical. There is no joy in it, and there is no creation.

We are hedged in by fear, by anxiety, by the desire for security; but in order to understand this problem we must look at it from every side, consider all its aspects through the everyday excitements in newspapers and cinemas, the search for pleasure and all the luxuries, the sins, the half-hints, the education that we receive, which stifles all thinking, which prepares us to become something, which is the height of stupidity. We become lawyers, glorified clerks, but this education does not give us the culture of integration, the joy in living. We do not know how to look at a tree, we merely talk about it. And religiously, what are you? You go to the temple, you perform all the ceremonies and rituals. What are they? They are mere repetitions, vain repetitions. And our politics are mere gossip, cunning deceptions. Our whole existence being all that, how can there be creation for a man who is blind ? How can he see ? Surely, he could see if he would throw off all the rotten rubbish around him. It would be like a storm that comes and sweeps away things that are not firm, and from that freedom there would be creation. But not only do we not want freedom, we do not want revolution either – I am not talking about political or outward revolution – we do not want the inward revolution. We prefer to go on with this monotonous uncreative existence. We are afraid of what we might find.

So the problem can only be solved in understanding ourselves and the utterly uncreative state we live in; and it is only through self knowledge that creation can come into being, and that creation is reality or God, or whatever you may call It. It cannot come into being through repetition, through pleasurable habits, either religious or sexual. To understand ourselves is extremely arduous. If you go into this problem and become aware of its significance you will see what it reveals and that is what I have just now shown – a series of imitations, a series of habits, a series of clouds, and memories. This is what this question reveals, whether you like it or not. It is a fact, that occasional break in the clouds through which you see. But most of the time we are enclosed in our own cravings, wants and fears and naturally the only outlet is sex, which degenerates, enervates and becomes a problem. So, while looking at this problem, we begin to discover our own state, that is, what 'is' ; not how to transform it, but how to be aware of it. Do not condemn it, do not try to sublimate it or find substitutions, or overcome it. Be simply aware of it, of all it means; your going to the temple; your sacred thread, your repetition, your family and so on. See how monotonous, how uncreative all of it is; how stupid it is. These are facts and you must be aware of them. Then you will feel a new breath, a new consciousness and the moment you recognize 'what is', there is an instantaneous transformation; seeing the false as false is the beginning of wisdom, but we cannot see the false if we are not aware of every moment of the day, of everything we say, feel and think and you will see that out of that awareness comes that extraordinary thing called love and a man who loves is chaste, a man who loves is pure and knows life. (18)

We have lost the sense of love because we are not creative. And society, with all its values based on repetition of the past, contributes to this withering of our beings.
THE TOTAL REVOLUTION

In order to revive our creative faculties, we must accomplish a profound and total internal revolution which will sever our connection with the regressive values of our civilisation. This can only be done by an exhaustive understanding, covering a double set of values, those which are internal, our desires, and those which are external, their organisation by society. The understanding of the first is to some extent a preparation for the second, for it enlightens us as to our mental make-up, and creates in us the psychological climate, through which we shall go beyond the problems inherent in every contradiction. And that is how Krishnamurti began. His thought followed a course of development which was quite logical.

Here he is, in 1931, dealing with the question in a simple and direct manner:

The rich man who decides to be poor and give away all his possessions, accomplishes an action which is equal to zero, for it is not an action, in the real sense of the word, but a reaction. Poverty for him is merely the opposite of wealth, within a conflict which has not been solved.

It is as erroneous to believe that wealth is an evil and poverty a virtue, as it is erroneous to believe the opposite.

Wealth which is nothing but possession is negative. Poverty which is but a lack of possession is also negative. Wealth and poverty are positive when they meet within the inner plenitude of detachment.

When wealth and poverty are outside of all possessions, they acquire in that detachment a new meaning: the lack of what you have becomes the wealth of what you are.

Men have raised within themselves a double barrier to truth: wealth and poverty. But Truth cannot be found by means of spiritual or material possessions. It is not the result of compensations in both those yields. Truth is neither rich nor poor. All discussions on this subject lead nowhere, and I do not want to stop at it too long. How can one use physical comfort or discomfort as a criterion for truth? He who is really simple is influenced neither by comfort nor by discomfort, because he has the fullness of Life. (20)

Once more we are back to detachment, but how different it is from resignation! What is the good of an action which is only reaction? A man who yields to reactions of all kinds, within a system which does not suit him, in reality does not act at all, for he is not free of that which he wishes to destroy. For Krishnamurti, detachment consists in liberating oneself from the opposites. In that way only can one stop being both victim and accomplice.

I have said that true simplicity is the plenitude of detachment. It is the plenitude of a love detached and impersonal in which there is no more distinction between subject and object, as well as the plenitude of a mind concentrated to the extreme but absolutely supple, never rigid, always on the alert to grasp the essential. This harmonious whole of love and thought is the simplicity of intuition, which is detachment.

The detachment of which I speak is not the contentment of remaining in the condition in which one finds oneself. The man who is contented with everything is not essentially different from the one who always wants to change the exterior conditions because he finds no peace anywhere. Neither one nor the other is really detached. They continue to be slaves and servants of the causes which create the civilisation in which they live. They contribute to this civilisation which poisons man.

He who has reached true detachment has first freed himself from his condition of slavery, that is, he is no more the slave of causes which at every moment create a civilisation which binds men. And from the very fact that he has freed himself, that he no longer contributes to the creation of this civilisation, he belongs, on the contrary, to the true civilisation, the goal of which is the liberation of man.

From then on, his simplicity is not expressed by reactions within the civilisation from which he is detached: he does not react against a particular way of dressing or of living by affirming that truth consists in dressing or living in a different way. He refuses to take a stand in a game that he no longer plays. For him, the whole game of this civilisation is outside of what he considers as the natural order suitable to men. If others think they can adapt themselves to it, he on the contrary, is purely and simply not adapted to it.

Indeed, he makes use in this civilization of that which he physically needs to live according to a minimum freed from all personal desire. If, because of circumstances, he cannot get this minimum, it might weaken him physically to the point to stifling his expression, to the point of killing him, but it will not change his nature or the nature of his expression. (20)

Those words truly express a revolutionary consciousness. The wish to alter external conditions which spring from mere reaction, shows a condition of slavery and not a state of creativeness. Only he who has freed himself from his condition of slavery can act truly. But he who has not freed himself from 'the causes which at every moment create a civilisation which keeps men in chains', can only add to chaos.

Here we come to the following conception of Krishnamurti: Our civilisations, he says, are based entirely on reactions.

For him who is ignorant, reality is a composite of both the outer world and his own inner world and the reactions resulting from it. When he thinks he is acting freely, his actions are determined by causes which he does not know; when he thinks he is positive, he merely reacts to exterior contacts.

The result of all these reactions is what is called civilisation. However, the function of true civilisation is to help man arrive at pure action. If, as we can see it in our present time, civilisation does not succeed in doing this, it is not true civilisation. In order to find Truth in that civilisation, we must bring to light the reactions which produce it, and within this unreality discover the real and grasp it. It is thus that we shall be able to reject false civilisation; whereas renunciation would still merely be part of it.

To realise that we are passive, that we act automatically, is to begin working consciously on ourselves. But in order to know whether we are standing still or whether we are moving ahead, we must have a point of comparison. This point of comparison is pure action, that is, the goal itself which man must reach. To assert this goal, to keep it present, is to use it as a means to reach it. Without it, we are dominated by a negation which will lead us to complete indifference. (20)

The individual brought us to the social. The social brings us back to the individual, in the unceasing identification of man with life. But how can we adhere to that life, establish it, create in us the goal, which eventually will emerge, from the negation of life, built on reactions, which we call civilisation? Certainly not by attempting to create 'for others' a better order.

There are not two problems, one 'spiritual' and the other 'material'. Nor can one 'give' here or there, or 'receive' here or there. No one can 'distribute material riches' any more than one can 'distribute spiritual riches'.

Kind and generous souls, moved by the desire to relieve human misery, endeavour to render more attractive the innumerable prisons that already exist. They believe that by bettering the conditions of life, they will make men kinder and happier. They forget that a model prison is still a prison.

It is obvious that the conditions of life should be improved, but not by depending on charity. They must be improved by technique as well as by the understanding of Life. An excellent technique developed at the expense of the meaning of Life, is ineffective; it must, on the contrary, be guided by the meaning of Life, developed to its maximum.

I do not want to decorate the old cages, I do not even want to destroy them. For even if all the prisons were destroyed, men would build others and would decorate their walls. Everyone must learn to free himself. My goal is to create in men the desire which will break all cages, and to awaken in them the will to discover truth, real happiness. . .

One must not be satisfied and contented even though one is well fed. At present the whole system of life is based on the individual fighting the whole, that is, on selfishness.

You place a wrong emphasis on individuality. The individual thinks that by self-expression, through fighting for himself, for his existence, his welfare, he is progressing. Individuality cannot be asserted in collective work, it will only produce chaos as it has always done. You think that through self-expression, through work, accumulation, you will progress towards happiness, Reality, whereas Reality can never be realised through congregational efforts, through saviours, but only through your own individual effort. If you understand this, you will plan life differently. At present you have sought collectively to realise the Truth and to assert your individuality, your self-expression in activities which can only be collective. Now I say that you must work collectively, and seek Truth individually, independently. If you base your whole planning of life on this conception, there can be no exploitation of peoples caused by selfishness and greed, no confusion of the individual's search after Reality with the work of the collective, which can only be done through the co-operation of many groups. Plan and work collectively but seek Reality individually; that is, brush away all ideals that you have set up through your selfishness, based on this false conception that through spiritual authority, through the effort of another or through an institution or through worship, you can realise Truth . (5)

These quotations are clear enough, especially in the distinction between individualism and the individual search for truth. The hypocrisy of the well-meaning is well brought out, as well as the necessity for withdrawing from the game. Nevertheless, one cannot but notice a certain weakness, a certain vagueness on the constructive side. What is this 'pure action'? How does it originate? Where and on what basis does it act? How can it be established as a 'point of comparison'? And how can this 'goal' be 'asserted' and 'used as at means to reach it'? We must acknowledge that here, Krishnamurti’s thought hesitates weakens, stops, and finally stumbles on words which convey practically nothing.

We have to cover fifteen years before we reach the uncompromising assertions inherent in the clear condemnation of becoming. Re-discovering his starting-point and sweeping away all the rest, Krishnamurti, in a kind of storm of extremes, erects it into an absolute. This he had done, as a matter of fact, even at the beginning, but his thought took time to follow. He had to attain a most extraordinary sharpness of vision in order to cross the threshold of the unthinkable.

Thus we arrive at the bewildering 'total revolution' which, at Benares in 1949, penetrated the elements of our thought and calmly, patiently, without fuss, broke them one by one.

Reform in a social order is merely retrogression – don't look surprised – is it not? Is not reform merely maintaining an existing social condition and giving it a certain modification, but fundamentally maintaining the same structure? Reformation is, is it not?, a modified continuity of a social pattern which gives a certain stability to society; and change also is of the same character, is it not? Change also is a modified continuity, because change implies a formula which you are trying to follow; or a standard which you are establishing, approximating the present to that standard. So, reformation and change are more or less the same thing, basically. Both imply the continuance of the present in a modified form. Both imply, do they not?, that the reformer or the one who wishes to bring about the change, has a measure or a pattern according to which he is approximating his action; therefore his change, his reformation, is the reaction to the background in which he has been conditioned. So his reformation or change is the response of the background or the conditioning, which is merely approximating to a self-protected standard. I hope you are following all this. I am thinking aloud, I haven't thought of this before, so let us proceed.

So, a man who wishes to reform, to bring about certain reformation and change, is really a person who is acting as a detriment to revolution. A reformer or a man who wishes to bring about a change is really retrogressive; because either there is constant revolution, or merely change, a reforming modification. That modification, being the response of the background or of the conditioning in which he has been brought up, merely continues the background in another form. The reformer wishes, to bring about a change in a given society, but his reformation is only the reaction to a certain background; the approximation to a certain standard he wishes to establish is still the projection of his background. So, the reformer, the one who wishes to bring about a change, acts in society as a retrogressive factor. Please think about it, don't deny, don't brush it aside.

Now, what is the relationship between the reformer and the revolutionary, and what do we mean by the revolutionary? Is a man who has a definite pattern or a formula and wishes to work out that formula, is he a revolutionary? Whether the technique is pacific or bloody is irrelevant; that is not the point. Is a man who has a formula, a standard, a pattern to which he is approximating his action, a revolutionary in the fundamental sense of the word? It is very important to find this out, because everybody is concerned, or at least many people are concerned, about the question of revolution, about the left, the right, the center, and so on.

Now, when we talk about revolution it is about the revolution, according to a pattern either of the left, or of the right, or from the center; and when a person calls himself a revolutionary, is he not really a factor of retrogression in society, as is the reformer, and is the man who wishes to bring about a change? So, the man who has a formula and tries to approximate society to that, is really a person who acts as a retrogressive factor in society.

Who, then, is a real revolutionary? We can see that the revolutionary who has a formula, and the man who wishes to bring about a change, and the reformer, are alike. They are not dissimilar because they have basically the same attitude towards action. Action to them is the approximation to an idea; the idealist, the reformer, and the revolutionary, have a pattern. So, their actions are basically, are they not?, the reaction to their background and therefore a factor of retrogression.

And that is why such a revolution ultimately fails, because it is merely an approximation to the left or to the right, a reaction to an opposite. You follow? And reform is similar. The reformer wants to alter a certain maladjustment in society, and his reformation has its source in the response to his background, to his conditioning; so they all have a similarity, have they not? The bloody one, the reformer, and the continued modifier. They obviously are not really revolutionary.

Now, we are going to find out what we mean by revolution. Is not revolution a series of intervals between two conditioned responses? Is revolution the outcome of a static state, of action which is dynamic, or is revolution the constant breaking away of the background and therefore leaving nothing static at any given moment? That is, is revolution a sudden break in the modified continuity and therefore in the response of the background, or is revolution a constant movement which is never at any given moment static?

Therefore, can revolution ever imply change or reform? Reform and change indicate a state in which there has been no true action and which must be transformed, changed, a static state which needs to be altered; and, as we said, the reformer, or the one who wishes a change, and even the so-called revolutionary are similar in their aims. Reform or revolution to them is only a gradual process of becoming static. I think that's clear. We allow ourselves, – that is, the society, the community, the group, – to become static, static in the sense of continuing the same pattern of action; though we may seem to move, live and act, produce children and build houses, it is always within the same static pattern.

Now, is what I suggest possible, and is that not the only true revolution, that is, of never allowing oneself to become static? Society, which is the relationship between you and me, must never become static; only then can there be constant revolution in our relationship. Now, what is it that makes us static, that makes us act without depth, without meaning, without purpose, without beauty – which is what most of our lives are? We live, we produce, we build, but it is a static state, surely, it is not a creative state. And what is it that makes us static, what is it that makes society – which is really our relationship, your relationship with me and my relationship with another – static? What are the factors which produce action that has no significance, a life that has no meaning? What is it that produces in our relationship a sense of death? Though I may live with you, though I may work with you, there is something that is always destructive, that is always dead, that is always darkness, which is static. If we can understand and remove that, there will be constant revolution, constant dynamism, constant change – no, I don't want to use the word change – constant transformation.

Now what makes for transformation, what makes for true revolution and not the modified continuity, what brings about the destruction of this static state? What is it that brings about death in our relationship? Why do we grow stale, weary, exhaust ourselves sexually, physically, and in various ways decay, why? If we can understand that, then we will in a constant state of transformation. Now, what makes for death in relationship? What makes us stale, spoiled, corrupted and what makes us seek modification, change, and all the rest of it? Surely, our thinking, which is the outcome of the past. There is no thought without memory and memory is always the dead entity: it is over, only it revives itself in action in the present, but it is an action of decay, of death. Though it seems so active, so alive, so full of speed and energy, thought is really, is it not?, the outcome of a fixed pattern of memory. Memory is fixed and therefore what comes out of it must also be limited; and so does not the process of thinking itself bring about staleness, death, weariness, that static state? Therefore a revolution based on an idea, on thought, must sooner or later result in death. Thought which is ideation, or the groping towards an ideal, is the sacrifice of the present to an Utopia, the future. Sir, do you see something in this?

A relationship based on thought which is usage habit, must produce a society which is static, and the action of the reformer who wishes to change that society is still the action of death, darkness or the response of a static mind. If you observe, what makes us stale in our relationship is thinking, calculating, judging, weighing, adjusting ourselves; and the one thing which frees us from that, is love, which is not a process of thought. You cannot think about love. You can think about the person whom you love, but you cannot think about love.

So, the man who loves is the real revolutionary, and he is truly the religious person; because what is truly religion, is not based on thought, or on beliefs or dogmas. A person who is a net of beliefs and dogmas is not a religious person, he is a stupid person; whereas the man who really loves is the real revolutionary, in him is the real transformation. So, love is not a thought process, you cannot think about love. You may imagine what it should be, that is merely a thought process, but it is not love; and the man who loves is the real religious person, whether he loves the one or the many. Love is not personal or impersonal; it is love, it has no frontiers, it has no class, no race. A man who loves is revolutionary. Love is not the product of thought, for thought is the outcome of conditioning, and can only produce death, decay.

So, there can be true revolution, a fundamental transformation, only when there is love, and that is the highest religion. That state comes into being when the thought process ceases, when there is the abnegation of that process. There can be abnegation of something only when it is understood, not denied. A community, a society, a group, can be really revolutionary, continuously transforming itself, only when in that state, and not according to a formula; because a formula is merely the product of a thought process, and therefore inherently the cause of a static state. We can also see that hate cannot produce a radical revolution, for inevitably that which is the product of conflict, antagonism, confusion, cannot be real, cannot be creatively revolutionary. Hate is the outcome of this thought process, hate is thought; and that transformation which love brings can only be when the thought process ceases; therefore thought can never produce a living revolution . (19)

All this is disconcerting enough for his listeners who ask for further explanations:

QUESTION. What do you mean by transformation?

KRISHNAMURTI. Obviously, there must be a radical revolution. The world crisis demands it. Our lives demand it. Our everyday incidents, pursuits, anxieties, demand it. Our problems demand it. There must be a fundamental, radical revolution, because everything about us has collapsed. Though seemingly there is order, in fact there is slow decay, destruction; the wave of destruction is constantly overtaking the wave of life. So there must be revolution – but not a revolution based on an idea. Such a revolution is merely the continuation of the idea, not a radical transformation. And a revolution based on an idea brings bloodhood, disruption, chaos. Out of chaos you cannot create order; you cannot deliberately bring about chaos and hope to create order out of that chaos. You are not the God-chosen who are to create order out of confusion. That is such a false way of thinking on the part of those people who wish to create more and more confusion in order to bring about order. Because for the moment they have power, they assume they know all the ways of producing order. But seeing the whole of this catastrophe – the constant repetition of wars, the ceaseless conflict between classes, between peoples, the awful economic and social inequality, the inequality of capacity and gifts, the gulf between those who are extraordinarily happy, unruffled, and those who are caught in hate, conflict, and misery – seeing all this, there must be a revolution, there must be complete transformation, must there not?

Now, is this transformation, is this radical revolution, an ultimate thing, or is it from moment to moment? I know we would like it to be the ultimate thing, because it is so much easier to think in terms of far away. Ultimately we shall be transformed, ultimately we shall be happy, ultimately we shall find truth; but in the meantime, let us carry on. Surely, such a mind, thinking in terms of the future, is incapable of acting in the present; and therefore such a mind is not seeking transformation, it is merely avoiding transformation. And what do we mean by transformation?

Transformation is not in the future, can never be in the future. It can only be now, from moment to moment. So, what do we mean by transformation? Surely, it is very simple: seeing the false as the false, and the true as the true. Seeing the truth in the false, and seeing the false in that which has been accepted as the truth. Seeing the false as the false, and the true as the true, is transformation. Because when you see something very clearly as the truth, that truth liberates. When you see that something is false, that false thing drops away. Sir, when you see that ceremonies are mere vain repetitions, when you see the truth of it, and do not justify it, there is transformation, is there not?, because another bondage is gone. When you see that class distinction is false, that it creates conflict, creates misery, division between people – when you see the truth of it, that very truth liberates. The very perception if that truth is transformation, is it not? And as we are surrounded by so much that is false, perceiving the falseness from moment to moment is transformation. Truth is not cumulative. It is from moment to moment. That which is cumulative, accumulated, is memory, and through memory you can never find truth; for memory is of time – time being the past, the present and the future. Time, which is continuity, can never find that which is eternal; eternity is not continuity. That which endures is not eternal. Eternity is in the moment. Eternity is in the now. The now is not the reflection of the past, nor the continuance of the past, through the present, to the future.

A mind which is desirous of a future transformation, or looks to transformation as an ultimate end, can never find truth. For truth is a thing that must come from moment to moment, must be discovered anew; and, surely, there can be no discovery through accumulation. How can you discover the new if you have the burden of the old? It is only with the cessation of that burden that you discover the new. So, to discover the new, the eternal, in the present, from moment to moment, one needs and extraordinarily alert mind, a mind that is not seeking a result, a mind that is not becoming. A mind that is becoming can never know the full bliss of contentment; not the contentment of smug satisfaction, not the contentment of an achieved result, but the contentment that comes when the mind sees the truth in what is and the false in what is. The perception of that truth is from moment to moment; and that perception is delayed through verbalization of the moment.

So, transformation is not an end-result. Transformation is not a result. Result implies residue, a cause and an effect. Where there is causation, there is bound to be effect. The effect is merely the result of your desire to be transformed. When you desire to be transformed, you are still thinking in terms of becoming, and that which is becoming can newer know that which is being.

Truth is being from moment to moment; and happiness that continues, is not happiness. Happiness is that state of being which is timeless. That timeless state can come only when there is a tremendous discontent – not the discontent that has found a channel through which it escapes, but the discontent that has no outlet, that has no escape, that is no longer seeking fulfilment. Only then, in that state of supreme discontent, can reality come into being. That reality is not to be bought, to be sold, to be repeated; it cannot be caught in books. It has to be found from moment to moment, in the smile, in the tear, under the dead leaf, in the vagrant thoughts, in the fullness of love. For love is not different from truth. Lowe is that state in which thought process as time has completely ceased. And where love is, there is transformation. Without love, revolution has no meaning; for then revolution is merely destruction, decay, a greater, and greater, ever-mounting misery. Where there is love, there is revolution, because love is transformation from moment to moment . (19)
BEYOND WORDS

We were taught that civilisation implies both ideas and habits; a stabilisation of human relations; an organisation of groups around special sets of characteristics; political, administrative cultural, scientific and artistic institutions; an inheritance of material achievements which give society a certain independence of nature ; individuals taking part in it with the idea of continuous development and progress in the economic, material and moral orders; energies and wills turned toward the future, unlike the barbarians turned towards the past and absorbed in the present; a wisdom called foresight, allowing one to save riches for future use, to obtain maximum results with a minimum in the way of effort, and to transmit to one's descendants more than one received; and to crown this edifice, we were told that civilised man was conscious of his individuality and of the sanctity of the human personality.

These big words, devoid of sense and reason, do not express what is. Reality is in the tragic and ridiculous destruction of these pretensions. Bloodshed and ruin call for other words. But there is nothing but stubborn quarrelling. The poison of propaganda has gone too deep for any cure. The human is assassinated in the classifications of administrative ignorance.

Let those who feel the same add their cries of distress to this. Let the unconditioned human being, the rebel, the absolute, the irreducible human being, to himself end and means, begin here and now, whatever happens, or may happen. For if, now, he is: whatever happens, he will be.

Sirs, any new culture, any new society, must begin with you. How did Christianity, Buddhism, or any other vital thing begin? With a few who really were aflame with the idea, with that feeling. They had their hearts open to a new life. They were a nucleus, not believing in something, but in themselves. They had the experience of reality – reality of what they saw. And what you and I have to do, if I may suggest, is to see things for ourselves directly, not through a technique. Sir, you may read a love poem; you may read what love is, but if you have not experienced what love is, no amount of your reading, or learning the technique, will give you the perfume of love. And because we have not that love, we are looking for the technique. We are jaded, we are famished, so we are superficially looking for a technique. A hungry man doesn't look for technique. He just goes after food, he doesn't stand outside the restaurant and smell the food. So when you ask for a technique it indicates that you are really not hungry. The how is not important, but why you ask the how is important.

So, there can be an evolution, the inward continuous renewal, only when you understand yourself. You understand yourself in relationship, not in isolation. As nothing can live in isolation, to understand yourself, to have that knowledge of yourself at whatever level, can only be learnt in relationship. And as relationship is painful, is constantly in motion, we want to escape from it and find a reality outside of relationship. There is no reality outside of relationship. When I understand relationship, then that very understanding is reality. Therefore, one has to be extraordinarily alert, awake, all the time watching, open to every challenge and to every suggestion and hint. But that demands a certain alertness of mind and heart; but most of us are asleep, most of us are frustrated, most of us have one foot in the grave, though we are young. Because we think in terms of achievement, we think in terms of gain, therefore we are never living; we are always concerned with the end; we are end-seekers, not people with life. Therefore we are never revolutionary. If you are concerned directly, with life, with living, and not with the idea about living, then you cannot help but be a revolution in yourself; you would be a revolution, because you are meeting life directly, not through the screen of words, prejudices, intentions and ends. And the man who meets life directly is a man who is in a state of discontent; and you must be in a state of discontent to find reality. And it is reality that releases, that frees; it is reality that frees the mind from its illusions and its creations. But to find reality, to be open to reality, is to be discontented. You cannot seek reality, it must come to you; but it can only come to you when the mind is completely discontented and ready. But most of us are afraid to be discontented because God knows where that discontent will lead us to. Therefore our discontent is hedged about with security, with safety, with carefully planned out action. A! nd such a state of mind cannot understand truth. Truth is not static, for truth is timeless and the mind cannot follow truth, because the mind is the product of time; and that which is of time cannot experience that which is timeless. Truth comes to him who is in that state of discontent, but who does not seek an end; for the seeker of an end is the person who is seeking gratification; and gratification, satisfaction, is not truth. (19)

The human is beyond experience, beyond thought beyond words. In truth, with Krishnamurti, love has gone beyond any utterance, it has entered into silence.

When do you act without ideation ? When is there an action which is not the result of experience? Because an action based on experience is, as we said, limiting, and therefore a hindrance. Action which is not the outcome of an idea is spontaneous when the thought process, which is based on experience, is not controlling action. That is the only state in which there is understanding: when the mind, based on experience, is not guiding action. What is action, when there is no thought process? Can there be action without thought process? That is, I want to build a bridge, a house. I know the technique, and the technique tells me how to build it. We call that action. There is the action of writing a poem, of painting, of governmental responsibilities, of social, environmental responses. All are based on an idea or previous experience, shaping action. But is there an action when there is no ideation?

Surely, there is such action when the idea ceases; and the idea ceases only when there is love. Love is not memory. Love is not experience. Love is not the thinking about the person that one loves, for then, it is merely thought. Surely, yon cannot think of love. You can think of the person you love or are devoted to – your guru, your image, your wife, your husband; but the thought, the symbol, is not the real which is loved. Therefore love is not an experience.

Now, when there is love, there is action, is there not? and is that action not liberating? It is not the result of mentation, and there is no gap between love and action, as there is between idea and action. Idea is always old, casting its shadow on the present and trying to build a bridge between action and idea. When there is love – which is not mentation, which is not ideation, which is not memory, which is not the outcome of an experience, of a practised discipline, – then that very love is action. That is the only thing that frees. As long as there is mentation, as long as there is the shaping of action by an idea which is experience, there can be no release; and as long as that process continues, all action is limited. When the truth of this is seen, the quality of love, which is not mentation, which you cannot think about, comes into being.

This is what actually happens when you love somebody with all your being; this is exactly what takes place. You may think of that person, but that is not the actual; and, unfortunately, what happens is that thought takes the place of love. Thought can then adjust itself to the environment, but love can never adjust itself. Adjustment is essentially of the mind, and the mind can invent 'love'. When I say, 'I love you', I am adjusting myself to you; but there can be no adjustment where there is love – it is alone, it has no second. Therefore it cannot adjust itself to anything. When there is love, the idea of adjustment, of conformity of action based on idea, completely ceases. When there is love, there is action which is relationship; and where there is adjustment in relationship, there is no love. When I adjust myself to you because I love you, it is merely conforming to your desires, and the adjustment is always to the lower. How can you adjust yourself to the higher, to that which is noble, pure? You cannot. So, adjustment exists only when there is no love. Love is second to none; it is alone, but not isolated. Such love is action, which is relationship; it has not the possibility of corruption, as mentation has, because there is no adjustment. As long as action is based on an idea, action is mere adjustment, a reformed, modified continuity; and a society which is the outcome of an approximation to an idea, is a society of conflict, misery and strife. There is freedom in the action which is not the result of mentation; and love is not devotion to something which is ideation. A devotee is not a lover of truth. Devotion is not love. In love, there is not the you and the other. There is complete fusion of the two, whether of the man with the woman, or the devotee with his idea. Such love is not the gift of the few, it is not reserved for the mighty ones.

But you have not understood the implications of action based on experience. When one really sees that profoundly, when one is aware of all the implications, there is the cessation of mentation. Then there is that state of being which is the outcome of discontent. Discontent is not pacified through self-fulfilment but as long as there is no self-fulfilment, discontent is the springboard from which there is a jump into the unknown. It is this quality of the unknown which is love. The man who is aware that he is in a state of love, is not loving. Love is not of time. Therefore, you cannot think about it; what you can think about is of time. What you can think about is merely the projection of itself, it is already the known. When you know love, when you practise love, surely it ceases to be love, because it is merely an adjustment of experience to the present; and where there is adjustment, there can be no love. (19)

(1) STAR BULLETIN  March 1928
(2)      »        »        May 1929
(3)      »        »        Aug.-Sept. 1929
(4)      »        »        Oct. 1929
(5)      »        »        Nov.-Dec. 1931
(6)      »        »        Jan.-Feb. 1932
(7)      »        »        Mar.-Apr. 1932
(8) THE POOL OF WISDOM – 1926
(9) THE KINGDOM OF HAPPINESS – 1927
(10) WHO BRINGS THE TRUTH – 1927
(11) LIFE IN FREEDOM – 1928
(12) THE IMMORTAL FRIEND – 1928
(13) LET UNDERSTANDING BE THE LAW – 1928
(14) LIFE THE GOAL – 1928
(15) EXPERIENCE AND CONDUCT – 1930
(16) THE SONG OF LIFE – 1931
(17) OJAI TALKS – 1944
(18) MADRAS TALKS – 1947
(19) BENARES TALKS – 1949
(20) L’HOMME ET LE MOI (French)

 

 

 

 

 

 


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